Off the beaten track

There’s a saying that goes something like this: if you make a plan, life will just laugh at you. The original saying is much more elegant, but you get the general idea.

When I was younger (e.g. before kids), I had a pretty clear life plan. I spent much of my 20’s in school (first college, then graduate) and had a pretty clear idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. First graduate school, then postdoctorate research, then an academic career. Seems pretty easy, right?

And then I got ambitious. I wanted my career, and a family. I somehow thought that being pregnant would be –just– the motivation I needed to finish my degree. Well, pregnancy had its own plans and finishing my degree was not part of them.

But in those first hazy, infatuated days of motherhood, I simply didn’t care. I was in love with my newborn and wanted nothing more than to squish her cuddly self and proclaim my amazement at her tiny toes. We had six blissful months of enjoying the novelty and wonder of becoming parents: picnics and zoo trips, Father’s Day, July 4th fireworks at the beach, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and her first Christmas. And then like all things in life, everything changed.

We found out on New Year’s Day that my mother had the big C. And not one of those subtypes that can be won with miracle drugs and fighting the good fight. One of the bad ones that are terminal and painful and horrid. But we got through it, all of us, and we had eight months together before the end. Because the hour after we heard the news, we started packing up our lives in California and moved our family 2000 miles away, back to my hometown near Chicago.

And so started the year from hell. A big move cross country with a 7-month old, a new routine of hospital visits and doctors visits and chemo and radiation. Hope and disappointment, kairos moments of family bliss tempered with unjust despair at how things turned out, all mixed up; shaken, not stirred. And underneath all of this, finishing up my degree in four months so that I could graduate in time for my mom. For seven years, our weekly conversations had centered around two main topics: how was I? and when would I graduate. It was a bittersweet moment when we had a chance to get a photo together in my cap and gown, in our living room, after we canceled our trip to California for commencement because she was too ill to travel.

And then she passed, on a beautiful fall day, surrounded by family and friends. And there was the funeral to plan and execute, her estate to clear and details to attend to, and her home to pack up and renovate; and in moments both too long and too short, the year was over. With the weighty responsibilities of parenting and work and her estate to manage, another year passed as well, but a better one, filled with those magical moments of early childhood where the wonder of a child can heal your soul and lift you up out of grief and loss and uncertainty.

So we found ourselves buying a home, building a new life in the Midwest, one where we would raise our daughter, maybe add to our family, and hope that there would be many good days ahead. But in buying that home, establishing a new life here, something was exchanged in the process. My old plan, my career, my clear and certain path.

There is a part of me that wonders, in an alternate universe, is there another version of me that completed that original checklist? Would she be on her way to an academic career? Would she still be living in California? Would her mother still be alive and well? Some days, I would like to be her.

But most other days, I count my blessings. My gift of a daughter, whom I adore and who adores me back; my loving husband who deserves real medals for putting up with me; my incredible friends and family who find me funny and support me when I’m not. We have a good life here.

Even if my career is faltering, even if my work is treading water until we have another child and he or she is ready for full-time preschool, life is still full of possibilities. I am making peace with this different path. It is okay to choose my family, to choose this life we have made for ourselves, instead of professional accolades. And when my former classmates write of their fancy fellowships or new academic positions, of the great strides they are making in their fields, I find myself cheering them on, and only a bit wistful of their success.

This wasn’t the path that I had designed, but it is the one that I am on, and I will stop along the way to enjoy the roses.