If I gave you the moon, you'd grow tired of it soon.

Suz and her husband took turns infecting one another with "earworms". When a song suddenly pops into her head or she begins to mindlessly hum or sing a tune, she will inevitably hear him in the other room chuckling pointedly in response: another successful transfer.

One song that chronically infects her subconscious, but that never seems to contaminate his is “After You Get What You Want You Don’t Want It” by Irving Berlin. It’s a go-to in the shower or when chopping vegetables for dinner or while searching for where she’s locked up her bicycle… The occurrences seem arbitrary enough to be random, but they’re a byproduct of the internal cringe that occurs when she realizes that she too is “like a baby, you want what you want when you want it.”

In another kitchen, with another woman chopping vegetables for dinner, a teenaged Suz once shouted “why didn’t you ever force me to pursue a sport or instrument?!?!” at her mother. It is nearly certain that elsewhere in the world at that exact moment some other child was shouting at their parents for having forced them to practice a sport or instrument. This particular outburst was a flare of jealousy at having heard one of her friends – another insolent teen – expertly play the piano during a break at drama club that afternoon. All the other drama-dweebs had swooned and were in awe and couldn’t stop talking about how “exceptional” she was. None of us can choose our burdens and Suz apparently perceived not being forced into a pursuit as one of hers. She could so clearly trace her lack of being “exceptional” to the fact that her mother had never channeled her failed dreams and goals into her children. There was no 5am early jog or drive to the pitch, rink, trainer. Her fingers weren’t calloused or bleeding from strings, bows, spit valves… Had her mother taken the initiative or better yet seen some potential talent in her chubby legs or hands as a toddler or had she forced games of chess or otherwise tapped her untapped potential, who knows what might have happened? Suz may have been a prodigy if not for her mothers’ apathy. All those hours and days and years wasted outside playing with friends! All of that aimless unstructured amusement and play! Why?! The why of it was simple: Suz and her siblings were being raised by an underpaid single mother and sports and musical instruments almost always include temporal and financial costs. There was no time or money for expensive hobbies. Instead there were habits or clubs that required zero equipment and took place close enough to home that they could get there on our own. Theirs was not a childhood of carpools or moms on the school run. “You're always wishing and wanting for something, When you get what you want, you don't want what you get.”

As an adult with a bank account and a reasonable schedule that was all her own, Suz was spoilt for hobby choice and went a little wild. Every new prospective pastime presented a new Suz that she would surely become. She could picture herself as a Persephone incarnate, growing vines and towering plants in a matter of a weekend, should she choose gardening. Would she need additional insurance once her interest in aerial sports resulted in her competing in amateur trapeze competitions? Would she ever have peace once friends and family tasted the amazing things that she would learn to bake? In reality, cooking classes were attended only for a limited time. Accordions were rented and returned. Ukuleles were bought, played for a week and then assumed an ornamental function. Knitting groups were formed and abandoned, memorialized via half-finished scarves and sweaters in a tote bag hanging on the coat rack. Books were started and abandoned, some purchased expressly for book clubs that were never visited. “And though I sit upon your knee, you'll grow tired of me…”

Suz explained away her flighty style of picking up and dropping hobbies as having to do with being raised a "navy-brat". The whole of her childhood, before her parents divorced, had been spent reinventing herself every 18-36 months before her father would once again receive orders for a new station, forcing the family to relocate to new cities, states, bases and schools. There were no opportunities to learn about or experience perseverance and she had certainly not been willing to make a hobby of it. Suz was sure that once she found the hobby that she was best at, she would pursue it tirelessly. Maybe she would be exceptional at it! Maybe it would lead to her opening her own etsy online store! “But after you are presented with what you want, you're discontented.”

Her husband tolerated her flirts with various forms of recreation with the patience of a saint, only complaining when the song that Suz had been obliterating on the lute, harp, oboe, etc. became stuck in his head. His career had caused her adulthood to be as nomadic as her childhood and it was a blessing that no particular past-time, club or avocation became anything more than a dalliance. That would make for a traumatic leave-taking once it was time to move onto to a new post in a new city yet again. Clubs and emotional investments in something solid would have upset the delicate balance that they had obtained after a decade and a half together. “Changeable, you've got a changeable nature, Always always changing your mind.”

But that one song that he was immune to had nothing to do with Suz’s pattern of flitting from past-time to past-time like a bee visiting all of the flowers in a meadow and collecting zero pollen. “There's a longing in your eye hard to satisfy, And here's the reason why:” The song plagued her regularly but never randomly. It nibbled its way into her brain in reaction to thoughts about whether or not the two should have children. “Baby I don't mean to make you blue but you need a talking to:” What if parenthood was a passing divertissement, just like all the other things that she had tried? “'Cause after you get what you want, You don't want what you wanted at all.”