After seeing the future

Always having yearned to see the future, she wished she could unsee it, live in blissful oblivion only wondering, gently, in that after meal time (after the children were all 6 and older and could leave the table by themselves) whether your child would have this success or that success, would they be a banker or an engineer, or maybe even *gasp* an activist so you would at least be proud of them even if you still had to help them out with rent at 35. You never imagined, daydreamed, about what heartache would be fall them, how many miscarriages or hearbreaks or divorces or stillbirths or dead pets or dead friends would find them, how many terrified nights they’d spend wondering if they were safe, or contemplating suicide only because it would give them relief from the deep unworthiness and panic they felt. You didn’t think about when racism or sexism or ugliness would find them, would it be 9 or 16? 22 or 27?