By Stephanie K. Hopkins
I celebrate my birthday at a friend’s house in a rustic Connecticut town. It’s the kind of house you find in dreams, yellow like the sun and bigger inside than outside, with rooms opening into rooms.
We wander in and out of them, looking for entrances and exits, things we put down and can’t find again, or conversations we left and want to continue. We pass each other on the way and sometimes forget that we were looking for anything, getting swept into an impromptu dance party in the kitchen or lulled by a burst of laughter from the yard.
We spend long stretches of time floating in the pool. We shut our eyes and feel like we are speeding across the water, but when we open them, we realize we are moving so slowly we are almost still.
Later, we’ll all sit around a table under the stars, and we’ll eat and drink and toast while the pool glows behind us.
In the yellow dream house, time cradles and also tricks us. When it’s time to go, it’s like a cocoon has been broken and back in our normal lives, we really are speeding across the water.
I see the ways in which we wander through our lives from room to room, love to love, life to life, hoping each one will make us forget we are looking for something.
Stephanie writes short stories, non-fiction, and young adult fiction. She recently finished a young adult novel, "Edge of Seventeen," and is working on a memoir about her adventures as an ex-professor turned bartender. You can reach her at stephaniehop@gmail.com and follow her on Twitter @stephaniehop1.
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