We've stopped planning

For the first time in my life it felt like I was the one who was perfectly calm and he the one weighted with uncertainty. I asked Mike what was on his mind (he has never been good at pushing his thoughts down so they're not so visible through his eyes) and he said that everyone who tells you that you should plan is wrong. "You can't plan more than 2 months ahead."

True.

I've thought this dozens, maybe hundreds of times over the course of the last four-ish years. Most of my "plans" were upended. But almost always they were replaced with something better. 1 for Faith. 0 for Reason.

"No, you can't plan. You just have to prepare," I told him. And it's hard to prepare when it could be for any number of things. Usually preparation connotes arranging, training, developing for a specific goal. It seems like in our case, we just prepare to swim, no matter which pool we're tossed in.

*

It's no secret to those close to me that I have terrible contact lens hygiene. I'll take them out when they bother me, but usually go days and nights on end wearing them around the clock. At a recent eye appointment my doctor told me that for now, my contact lens wearing has been suspended indefinitely. I've been cursing my glasses—the same pair I wore as a sophomore in high school—every day since. Often the annoyance of pushing them back into place, dodging Ada's grabby fingers, or figuring out how to put my hair behind my ears without knocking them, trumps the convenience of actually being able to see. I'm beginning to be okay with the fact that some things look blurry. I have to bring them close to me to bring them into focus.

*

None of it bothered me last night. So we don't know where we'll be living in the Fall. So we have not a clue where we'll get a job after that. So we're unsure what life will look like a few years down the road. What does it matter?

I feel confident with Michael at my side because I've seen that we are a team that can make anything work. That fact empowers me. It empowers me to take action when I feel like I'm acting in the dark, and it empowers me to sit still and serene when I'm not sure what happens next. We've got one another. And we've got this.