The Future Perfect

I chew at the pencil. I could never get my head around the future perfect. Miles and I would sit in Spanish, texting under the table when we had to conjugate tenses. It was a bit of a chicken or egg scenario. I don't know whether we didn't understand the language because we didn't pay attention or if we didn't pay attention because we didn't know what we were supposed to do. We'd make morbid jokes like scrawling the words 'is never' between future and perfect in our textbooks. Even at fifteen we knew life wasn't all sunshine and roses.

Miles and I dated for eleven months. He was the first boy I kissed. We did other things too but we never went all the way. Despite knowing that life wasn't perfect I still wanted to wait for the perfect moment, the perfect person...

Danny wasn't perfect. Nor was the conference room above the pub with it's beer-sticky table and fluorescent light. I was older though, and perfection seemed less important than not being left behind.

I met the perfect person a couple of years after the pub. Carlos was a wonderful collection of imperfections. I fell in love with him after one look only to burst out laughing when he spoke. The words tripped off his lips with a Spanish accent and I flashed back to Miles and our GCSE Spanish lessons. We both got E's in the end.

Carlos was fluent in English. He never minded that I couldn't string a sentence together in his mother-tongue and I found it decidedly sexy when he whispered foreign words in my ear, in bed. I think it would lose its magic if I understood what those words meant.

Maybe that's why I put off these lessons for so long. I never felt like I was missing out until our child learnt to speak. Now, Carlos has conversations with my son that are entirely out of my reach. My son talks to me in English and his father in Spanish and I miss half of his life.

I stop chewing the pencil and conjugate the future present in the open text book. I'm finally going to understand the words my husband whispers in my ear late at night. That is the imperfect result of the love I have for my child.