The Dream That Did Not Wait — On Deferral, Beauty, and Beginning

There is a famous question in American literature about what happens to a dream that is postponed.

I first encountered it as a 9th grader at Highland Park Senior High School in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was sitting in a classroom far from Asmara, far from Emba Derho, far from the corner outside the school gates where my father used to stand with us and say prayers before we went in. And I read a poem by Langston Hughes that asked a question I already knew the answer to — not from a textbook, but from watching a man who found an alphabet in a neighborhood called Geza Kenisha and decided that same day not to wait.

The poet offers several answers to his own question. None of them are gentle. A dream deferred dries out. It festers. It sags under its own weight. Or — in the final possibility the poet leaves open — it explodes.

I have been thinking about that question ever since. Not abstractly. In the specific, personal way that a question becomes yours when you have watched people you love live inside its answer.

The Dream That Did Not Wait

My father found the English alphabet from a neighbor in Geza Kenisha, a neighborhood in Asmara, Eritrea. He was sixteen. He had been working as a laborer. He had no father of his own — lost him so young that not even a memory remained.

He could have deferred.

The reasons to defer were everywhere around him. No classroom. No teacher. No clear path from where he stood to anywhere else. A laborer's life in a highland town in Eritrea in the 1940s did not come with obvious invitations to become something more.

And yet — he did not defer.

He took what the neighbor gave him and he started the same day. Not when the conditions were better. Not when he felt more ready. Not after he had figured out where it would lead. He started with what he had, from where he was, on the day the alphabet arrived.

That decision — that refusal to defer — produced a life that moved from laborer to public health worker to typist to Point 4 employee to travel agent to twenty-one years at Ethiopian Airlines. It produced a man who walked his daughters to school every morning and picked them up every afternoon. Who borrowed books from the British Library to teach them at home when no school would accept them. Who stood with them in a corner outside the school gates and said prayers before they went in.

It produced me.

The dream that does not wait does not dry out. It does not fester. It grows — quietly, steadily, brick by brick, day by day — into something that outlasts the person who carried it.

My father is gone. The practice I built is still here.

That is what happens to a dream that is not deferred.

The Dream That Was Taken

My mother's story is different. And it matters just as much.

She went to school as a girl. She was a little overweight. And she had a teacher — someone whose entire purpose was to see potential in children and encourage it — who chose instead to make fun of her. Who made her feel ashamed of the very act of showing up.

She left school around the 5th or 6th grade.

That was not a deferral she chose. It was a deferral imposed on her by someone who should have known better. And I want to say clearly — that teacher was wrong. Not just unkind. Wrong. About my mother, about her capacity, about what she deserved, about what the role of an educator requires.

But here is what I have learned about dreams that are taken rather than deferred by choice — they find another way out.

My mother went to work at the Cohen family boutique, making tailored clothing for the well-to-do in Asmara. She worked at Kagnew Station in their salon. She spent ten years at Christine Boutique helping women present themselves to the world with beauty and intention.

The dream of contributing something meaningful — of using her eye for beauty and her instinct for what makes a person feel seen — did not dry out. It could not be fully taken. It redirected. It found its expression in every garment fitted, every woman seated in her salon chair, every client who left Christine Boutique feeling more like herself than when she arrived.

And then she stayed home. And she became the infrastructure for a family of her own — the person who held everything together so everyone else could move forward. Who welcomed every visitor. Whose door was always open. Whose presence made every Sunday in Asmara feel like the world was held safely in place.

My mother worked in beauty before I was born.

I became a Master Esthetician.

I am still understanding all the ways the dream she carried lives in what I do.

The Dream in the Waiting Room

I want to talk about a third kind of deferral now. The one I see most often.

It does not come from a hostile teacher or a lack of access or a childhood of material hardship. It comes from something quieter and, in its own way, just as costly.

It sounds like this:

Maybe after the holidays. Maybe when things settle down. Maybe next year. Maybe when I have more time, more money, more certainty that it will actually work.

I hear this from women who have been deferring their own care for years. The treatment they keep meaning to book. The skin concern they have been managing with products that almost work. The mirror they have started avoiding. The photographs they are no longer in.

The dream being deferred here is not a career or an education. It is smaller and more personal than that — and no less real for being so.

It is the dream of feeling like yourself again. Of waking up and not immediately looking for what went wrong overnight. Of leaving the house without a full face of coverage for the first time in years. Of looking at a photograph and recognizing the person looking back.

That dream, deferred long enough, does what the poet described.

It does not explode dramatically. It dries out slowly. It becomes the quiet resignation of someone who has decided — this is just how things are now. Who has stopped expecting to be surprised. Who has made a kind of peace with a version of herself that is smaller than the one she remembers.

I built this practice because I know what that resignation feels like from the inside. Because I sat in a treatment room in 2012 with hope and left with damage that took six months to heal. Because I know what it costs to be in the hands of someone who did not take you seriously.

And I know what it costs to keep deferring.

What Ending the Deferral Actually Looks Like

It does not require a dramatic moment. It does not require perfect timing or the right circumstances or the complete resolution of every competing priority.

It requires the same thing my father required in Geza Kenisha.

A decision. Made on the day the opportunity arrives. With whatever is available. Without waiting for more.

My father did not wait for a classroom. He used the neighbor's alphabet.

My mother did not wait for the teacher to change her mind. She built a career in beauty with what she had.

The woman who is ready to stop deferring does not need to have everything figured out. She needs to make one appointment. Have one honest clinical conversation. Let someone who takes skin seriously finally take her skin seriously.

That is not a small thing. It is, in fact, the beginning of everything.

The Question the Poet Asked

What happens to a dream deferred?

I cannot answer for every dream. I can only answer for the ones I have watched.

The dream that is not deferred — my father's — grows into a life that produces other lives. It compounds. It reaches forward across generations in ways the dreamer could not have predicted and did not live to see completely.

The dream that is taken — my mother's — finds another form. It does not disappear. It redirects and resurfaces in the next generation, carrying the original intention forward even when the original path was closed.

The dream that is quietly postponed — maybe next year, maybe after the holidays — costs something real. Not everything, not all at once. But enough. The months accumulate. The skin keeps changing. The resignation deepens. The version of herself the woman was deferring toward becomes harder to reach with every season she waits.

The poet's final answer — the explosion — is not what I wish for anyone.

What I wish for is the thing my father chose.

Don't defer. Start with what you have. Begin on the day the opportunity arrives.

The dream that does not wait does not dry out.

It becomes everything that follows.