Excitement (1): Eagerly Waiting

Excitement

Noun

1. A feeling of great enthusiasm and eagerness

I had been calm for the full 12 days. I hadn’t been nervous or excited or worried, much. No butterflies. And when I went to bed that last night, I fell asleep easily. I simply drifted off to quiet, undisturbed dreams.

When I awoke on the day, however, I felt a little stab of something near my heart. An eagerness. As my brain began to churn, my heart  started to beat a bit faster and I recognized the feeling of butterflies taking flight in my stomach.

At breakfast, I was almost too excited to eat and as I poured my second coffee, I wondered at the wisdom of heaping caffeine on adrenaline. But I drank it anyway.

A faint shiver gripped my hands as I cleaned up after breakfast, causing me to move clumsily and too quickly. I was jumpy and at the least little sound, my breath caught in my chest and my heart beat faster still.

There were hours left to wait.

I skipped my yoga class. I tried again to read, unsuccessfully. I sat down to write but across the blank page danced disruptive visions, until I was watching them as if they were actors in a movie, and could not pay any heed to the words appearing on the page.

Last minute errands called to me, seeming urgent in my excited state of mind. I rushed out of the house, trying to keep to a self-imposed schedule and was home again with time to spare.

I paced on pins and needles.

I did not even try to eat lunch.

I wandered on edge from room to room, straightening things that didn’t need to be straightened, picking up invisible pieces of fluff.

I finally admitted to myself that I was excited and eager and thrilled and happy. And that I couldn’t wait.

And then I headed out, almost an hour early, to wait there instead of pacing around the house again.

I parked the car and, in an imitation of calm, went to sit under a nearby tree with a book. I flipped through the pages, but I couldn’t tell you what the story was about.

Cars roared along the busy street by my tree and each one sent a thrill through me, causing me to look up expectantly.

And then, fifteen minutes early, it appeared. A bus with tinted windows pulled into the parking lot, drove at an excruciatingly slow pace to the end, and carefully swung around.

I found myself standing with others like me, watching the door eagerly. I felt a lump in my throat and my face flushed as my eyes prickled.

The door opened and one, two, three faces appeared as the boys descended – and then, the familiar but extraordinarily changed visage of my son materialized before me, all smiles and a bigger grin than I have ever seen.

Calm and mature beyond his eight years, he crossed the distance between the bus and where I was standing to give me a hug. He looked up at me and smiled and I knew then that he really had had the best time of his life.

In that instant, I relaxed completely, happy to have him home but thrilled for him that he would have the chance to go back to camp again and again in the years to come.

One of two responses to today’s Daily Prompt: Tell us about the last thing you got excited about — butterflies-in-the-stomach, giggling, can’t-wait excited.