Best Laid Plans

Photo taken in March, 2020 on a walk

I’m a planner.

I love making lists (and crossing off completed tasks), studying the calendar to plot out travel plans months in advance, creating Google documents and spreadsheets. I don’t like leaving anything to the last minute, or to chance. If we were to psychoanalyze these tendencies, we could point to being raised in a stormy home environment, the child of an alcoholic (you never know which father will show up at any moment so you need to be prepared). Or perhaps it stems from being a first-generation American who needed to figure out lots of things (like how to apply to college) all on my own. Was it my birth order, or astrological sign, or just my personality? Who knows. To paraphrase the old Maybelline cosmetics advertisement: maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s childhood trauma.

Today is the last day of March, a month in which a few of my best laid plans went sideways. Thoughtfully arranged travel plans were scrapped due to an illness in my family. I schlepped my daughter to New Jersey to take the SAT and just as she was about to finish the test, the computer glitched, cancelling all of her work. (I appreciate that this infuriating event happened to my daughter and not to me, but as any parent of a rising senior will tell you, we are very much in this foxhole together). There were various professional and personal disappointments, and many emotionally low moments of worry and frustration.

Of course, there were plenty of bright spots in March, as well, and focusing on those is better for my mental health. My daughter got her drivers license. I was able to travel to Georgia to spend time with my sister and celebrate her milestone birthday. My son had a fabulous senior year Spring Break. I read several great books and saw some amazing theater. There were warm days, and the daffodils started blooming. My mother always taught me that daffodils were a sign that Spring was here at last.

But the planner in me, the person who craves order and avoids chaos, took a few hits. I had to shake off disappointments large and small and force myself to let things go. It isn’t lost on me that this month marked the five-year anniversary of the start of the pandemic, a time of loss, heartbreak, uncertainty and frustration. That was the ultimate "Make plans, G-d laughs” moment.

I typically (some might say obsessively) consider every angle of a plan, arranging things meticulously out of some unrealistic belief that my high-level executive functioning skills will stave off any bumps and everything will flow smoothly. What a silly assumption. Alas, there’s weather, technology, viral infections, cancelled flights, and lots of other people on the planet with entirely different agendas, needs and desires. There’s a whole wide world of shit happening, all the time, that is completely out of our control. The best we can do is learn to roll with the punches.

We are told to model grit and resilience for our kids, that these are some of the most important skills they need to develop. I often find that my teenager (the one who experienced the SAT debacle) bounces back from a crappy situation much more quickly than I do. Several times over the last few weeks, I was still eating my heart out with regret while she was exhibiting the resilience that I couldn’t muster. What a gift. Maybe it’s birth order (she is the third child). Maybe it’s the perspective she gained from an adolescence spent in lockdown. Or maybe, if she’s lucky, she was born with it - the ability to feel the disappointment, look for the silver lining, and then, with hope for a better day tomorrow, move on.