I look out my window most afternoons, around 2:45 when the light hits just right, at the little pottery studio across the street. The sign, hand-painted a cheerful robin's egg blue, says "Clay Dreams." And I think, not for the first time, about my own clay dreams. Or rather, my paint dreams, my charcoal dreams, my whole damn art degree that sits gathering dust in a box somewhere, a testament to a life I didn't choose. I mean, I don't even — whatever. It was a good degree, from a good school, and for a solid six months after graduation, I actually thought I'd make a go of it. Before the reality of rent, of health insurance (HA!), of feeding myself, set in. Before the well-meaning but persistent whispers from my mother about stability, about finding a "nice, sensible job" that would allow me to buy a house, have a family. And so, here I am, fifty years later, still looking out that window, still watching people walk into that studio with their smocks and their hopeful faces, knowing I traded all that for a steady paycheck and, eventually, the quiet domesticity of a life that was… fine. It was fine. It’s not that I regret my children, not ever. They are the absolute light. But sometimes, usually after everyone’s asleep, say 2 AM when the house is truly silent and the air conditioner hums its lonely song, I wonder what ‘I’ even means anymore. My identity became so intertwined with theirs, with schedules and school lunches and laundry — oh god, the laundry — that I feel like the person who once spent hours sketching the curve of a vase or the play of light on a crumpled newspaper just… evaporated. Like a ghost of a ghost. And there's this guilt that comes with it, a heavy, suffocating blanket of shame that I could ever want more than what I have. What kind of person, what kind of mother, looks at her perfectly good life and thinks, "But what about *me*?" We're not supposed to, are we? We're supposed to be content, fulfilled by the love of our family, by the sheer miracle of existence. And I am, I really am. Mostly. But then I see someone carrying a freshly glazed bowl, still warm from the kiln, out of that studio, and I feel a pang that's almost physical. A grief for a road not taken, a version of myself left behind. I wonder if the junior executive in the office building next door, probably staring at the same studio, feels it too. We all make our choices, don't we? We choose security over passion, practicality over poetry, and then we spend the rest of our lives wondering if we made the right call. And who's to say? I mean, probably that executive, with her steady income and her dental plan, she's got her own regrets. We all do. That’s just… life, I guess. A series of trade-offs, and then you're just left with the quiet hum of the AC at 2 AM, and the pottery studio across the street.