Some other Scotland

It seems, don’t it, that in trying to understand the whys and wherefores of other people’s lives we are just trying to understand ourselves and justify our own choices, for there but for the grace of God go I?  It’s a silly business, but it makes community possible and not just because it gives us all something to talk about, the lives of others, but provides safety in numbers, wherein we may ourselves disappear.  Like that time you said you loved Charles but wouldn’t marry him because he was too much like your father. And I thought to myself, no girl, you are just afraid of life. And then you married someone else you didn’t love and had your family and only now regretted your choice when it was too late anyhow, though you and I would talk about what might have been, you seeing yourself in some other Scotland, a materfamilias of a brood of children who would live out all the lives you saw for yourself when you first fell in love with Charles, laughing at yourself, and me offering the lazy, redundant comfort of a friend, saying we were both a pair of fools.