I am half-way through reading Beth Harbison’s ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE TO REMIND ME about a woman who finally reconnects with her first love 23 years after they broke up over a misunderstanding. The narrative is told from two points of view: through the third-person voice of the teenage girl and the first-person voice of the 39 year old woman.

Harbison’s ability to capture the intensity and honesty of emotions of teenage love is incredible. Equally incredible is her ability to convey the hard-edge clarity and steely practicality that overshadows everything when one is a full-time, working mother with no time for games.

It’s fascinating to read a novel about the WHAT IFs people think about once they reach midlife and wonder how differently things might have turned out if they had made Choice A instead of Choice B, especially when those choices are choices of the heart.

I don’t have to worry about the one who got away. I married him. I already went through the WHAT IFs during the raising of my infant children. I think the whole topic of parenthood brings up more taboos because if you struggle with parenting there is no morally acceptable way to abandon your responsibilities and commitments like there is when you want to get rid of a spouse. But that’s another topic for another time.

Right now we’re discussing young love at midlife. Even if you married your first love, you still have questions. It’s only human. You can’t appreciate what you’ve chosen without wondering what your life would look like if you had chosen something different.

That’s why it’s normal to find yourself in the greeting card section searching for a thank you card for your spouse and thinking of what you would send that cute guy in the corner office to get his attention. That’s why it’s normal to send a sext message to your spouse and wonder if you should type a witty innuendo on someone’s Facebook wall. The duality is always there. We are humans who need the darkness as much as we need the light. We need reality as much as we need fantasy. We need to be rooted in our love for the one we are with while not forgetting there are hundreds of thousands of others out there who might be interested in us but who we cannot be available for because we’ve made our choice.

The hard part, the messy part, the difficult to forgive part is when you cross the boundary from reality to fantasy, when you blur the line between what you have and what you do not, when you dare to believe you can straddle the darkness with the light on.

Hopefully, by the time you reach midlife in young love you’re learned you can have your reality and your fantasy if that’s where they both remain, on opposite sides of the same plate. When you find yourself in the greeting card section thinking of the one you love and buying a card for the cute guy in the corner office, you’re crossed the line, blurred the boundaries, set the whole house on fire. When you sext the Facebook friend and leave a witty innuendo on your beloved’s Facebook wall, you’ve turned the whole puzzle upside down and your whole life inside out.

Sure, it looks different, feels different, and that might be exciting for the moment, but who wants to walk around like a fool with a diaper on his head instead of a hat? Honestly. We see it all the time. Especially during midlife crises.

So, my friends, keep your hats on your head, your clothes right-side on, but go ahead and dream about the life you did not lead, the things you have not chosen. The richness of the dark soil feeds the seed of your soul just as much as the light from the heavens.

That’s the only way to grow old.