The woman stared outside her kitchen window hand washing dishes with a day-dreaming smile on her face, lost in the ‘cross-the-street green with him and his children playing in the warm spring day in the light rain. She had watched them play and rubbed the plate for so long the blue flowery design might have rubbed away. She laughed when his three-year-old son tackled his eight-year-old daughter, rolling on the ground, little droplets of rain summersaulting off the blades of grass and their hair. He was sipping a beer and laughing the way sad fathers laugh when their children are having unadulterated fun – the sort of laugh where perhaps this time it’s ok to be purely happy: this time, time and its past-obsessed attendants don’t matter. Time and memory can’t heave their weight on his eyes. This time it’s about the brief timeless moment of his children erupting in laughter. She saw this and looked down at her hands without noticing them, smiling in some made-up nostalgic way, remembering a past that wasn’t hers – only one she wished were. She stood there for some time washing the same plate, listening to Norah Jones Pandora, day dreaming about how she thought life might be. His daughter fell on the sidewalk and skinned her knee. He kissed it, smiled and rubbed her head. The woman was flushed with emotion, tears damned up in her eyes. She stopped washing the plate, for a moment. She heard a faint sound in the background. She heard her name, turned to see her husband home early from work. She removed her hand from the plate, smiled at her husband and said, Hey honey; how was your day? Her husband kissed her on the cheek and said, Great – can I help? He took the dish from her hand and finished washing the rest himself.