Life's Little "What Ifs"

By Guest Blogger Princess Leah

Ya know those days when it's too gray out, or you're too hung over, or you're just lying on your couch staring at the ceiling and you start thinking about "what if." There are big what if's, like "What if I'd gone to med school instead of law school." (Anyone who knows me and my complete ignorance of all things science will get a laugh out of that.) And then there are the small what if's. "What if I'd taken the freeway home istead of the surface streets, would I be home already?" But I'm talking about the most disconcerting of all what if's. The ones that seem small at the time, but end up changing the entire course of your life.

When I left Salem after law school and moved to Portland, it was my heart's desire to live in trendy Northwest. I mean, hell, I was young(ish) and single and starting out a career. Why not pay double for half the space so I could stumble home from the bars without driving? So off I went in search of the uber hip apartment. I found a small sunlit studio and put down my deposit. Until my mother stepped in. Laugh if you must. And she pointed out, as only a mother can, that not even half my stuff would fit in such a small space. So off I go again, mother in tow this time, to find the larger apartment I rented. Not so sunlit, not so cute, but all my stuff fit. So what, right? Yeah, except three doors down from me in the unhipper apartment was the man I married a year later. We never would have met if I'd lived in the studio I'd originally picked out. The small choices that end up huge.

Five years later and we've had two kids and one on the way. We've bought a house and each started our own businesses. We argue about housework. And this year for Christmas, my husband bought me a painting. Not just any painting. He knew I loved a particular artist. This is her work. Did he buy a print that I'd admired at a discount? No. He called her. He called her and hired her to create a painting for me of the trendy Northwest neighborhood where we first met. Top that, boys. And all because I picked a different apartment to live in several years ago.

Look out for those little what if's. Ya just never know.