It was a stellar spring day in the Washington, DC area — mild, a slight breeze, no oppressive humidity levels. Today was Cinco de Mayo and I got the idea to take Sami to a street festival in downtown Silver Spring. I called another single mama friend and we made a plan to meet up.

While I was waiting for her to show up with her little one, Sami and I picked a spot close to the stage. A terrific salsa band was blaring out hot, spicy music, and my feet moved back and forth of their own volition. Sami sat calmly in his stroller, content to watch the band do its thing.

Then it happened. I saw “them.” They were a perfectly innocent family and thankfully have no idea of the impact they had on me. They consisted of a young, tall, and very good-looking husband in a brown sweater, a lovely wife dressed in a striped button-down shirt and khakis, and a little boy about Sami’s age in blue Crocs, cavorting around the area in front of the stage. When the petite wife turned a bit, she looked to be about seven months pregnant. I instantly made them into the Perfect Family. I know that is an absolutely ridiculous formulation, but at the time I believed it wholeheartedly.

The joy I felt at hanging out with my little guy and dancing to salsa suddenly evaporated and I found myself overcome by an intense and gloomy longing. I studied that couple from head to toe. I wanted that sexy husband. I wanted to be that wife. I wanted to be pregnant with my second child. I wanted to possess all the illusions of safety that marriage represents. I wanted. I wanted. I wanted. In that moment, I found myself chasing after a hundred different phantom cravings. I was anywhere but where I was. I was lost, so lost in those moments. Damn did it hurt.

Perhaps the good thing is that I was pretty quickly aware of how I had just become possessed by that longing to not be who I am, to not be living the life I lead. I willed myself to drop the silliness like a hot potato. There is no point in anything but to inhabit the very spot in which I stand at any given spot on the space-time continuum. At the instant of that particular burst of insanity, it happened to be 6:50 pm-ish on Ellsworth Street in downtown Silver Spring, listening to awesome salsa music with my amazing little boy.

I got distracted with something the amazing little boy needed, and when I looked up, Perfect Family was gone. The poor people will never know how I reduced them into one-dimensional objects of longing. Mercifully, my brain moved on to other things.

Soon enough, my friend came and we managed somehow to drink a few beers and have some fun grown-up time while making sure our children were fed, adequately hydrated, hugged, and didn’t run into traffic or step on a broken beer bottle. Sami and his little friend had a wonderful time dancing around with the other toddlers and watching the dancers up on the stage. Towards the end of the night, Sami got carried away with a rubber duckie toss game at one of the booths and got soaking wet. It was a wacky little celebration.

I am amazed at how quickly my mind gets possessed by utter misery. It doesn’t take much. It’s like a quickly moving storm. While it always does pass, I am aware that I want to make all the clouds go away and for the sun to come out as quickly as the storm came. I want to just flip the sadness into joy. Sometimes that works, or maybe I just think it does. But tonight, I sit with my little grief mixed with a small bit of acceptance. Things are partly cloudy in my mind and heart.