To Dwell in Fear or Possibility

I have become afraid of the future. This is a strange feeling for me, a real 180, because, for most of my life I have been entirely future driven. As one of my favorite poets wrote, "I dwell in possibility."*Or, at least I used to. I could spend hours ideating and dreaming about what "could be". A solitary car ride or conversation with a friend would lead me to endless goals and ideas for the road ahead of me. In my teens, I'd ruminate about my future profession and the successes I'd enjoy. In my twenties I worked diligently to map out my professional goals, filled with ambition and a desire to climb to the very top of the work ladder. I'd plot out the moves I needed to make, reflecting on who I was as a professional. I'd study my role models and monitor my own actions and errors, noting what I needed to do to grow.

When we bought a house, I scoured magazines (pre-Pinterest), slipping out images and placing on a vision board of sorts. Together, Andy and I renovated our house, nearly top to bottom. We built an addition, almost doubling our home's footprint. I'd spend hours thinking about not only what our home would be like, but also our future family. A happy momma-to-be, I nested with the greatest pleasure, building with excitement over paint colors and matching sheets and crib bumpers. I'd often catch myself, standing in the middle of the baby's room, re-stacking diapers and onsies, filled with anticipation about meeting my child. And meeting them for the first time certainly did live up to my expectations, those birth moments revisited regularly with love and pride.

However, many of us experience the excitement about what lies ahead, yet it is often more rewarding than the actual event itself. This is often the case with travel or vacations, especially with children. You can spend months saving for a six day, seven night trip to Disney. You can feel giddy, with childlike glee, while downloading the park map app or opening the box with the colorful bracelets with each of your names on them. You light up thinking about bypassing standing in line for the tea cups as the fast pass lights up and let's you enter the ride.

Then you get to the park and, as you watch your child pee in her pants in line at the teacups, despite you pleading with her to just "hold it a little longer!" followed by her exhaustingly face planting into her spaghetti at the princess dinner you paid $200 a person to attend, you envision yourself as a tree, perhaps a birch or a maple. You see all of your leaves, shaped like dollar bills, turn brown and quickly fall to the ground, like a cold fall rain storm has passed through and taken your lovely anticipated fall right away from you. Oh, and all of your money, too.

The same goes for work. In my twenties, I knew I was destined for management. "When I'm the director," I'd dream, "I'll be the one in control. I'll make the decisions and I'll be an innovative leader and get tons of accolades and money and acknowledgement from my employer." My thirties consisted of a tangled web of navigating employment and child rearing, fearful that I was never enough for my staff, or my boss, or my children. I lived in a perpetual state of rawness and vulnerability, feeling fully susceptible to a wide range of criticism. Professional innovation was overshadowed by determining how to meet our goals with a smaller budget and smaller staff. The only thing I was able to control were my tears when I'd arrive at the office at 8:30 only to get a call from the school nurse at 8:40 because one of my kids had puked. On the thirty minute return home, I'd voice command my email to cancel all of my day's meetings and send each recipient a giant mea culpa, my guilt oozing through the internet. I've had my fair share of using sick time and putting a cold compress on my kid's forehead with one hand while typing an email with the other. I've not had my fair share of accolades and salary increases, however.

On the home decorating front, that white, Pottery Barn couch and matching linen curtains from Restoration Hardware look a lot less clean and a lot less white after they've been urinated on by my cats and kids. I will say, though, that the throw pillows come in quite handy when covering up a variety of stains.

Not to be a complete and utter downer but all of this anticipation/reality checking makes me feel like I live in one perpetual swimsuit shopping experience. We all know that the swimsuit always looks better on the model.

My current lens on the future is due to reflecting on my past. Perhaps it is knowing that I won't be anticipating many of these experiences, for better or for worse, ever again. I will never be giddy again about my kids' first trip to Disney and I will never again discover that success at work is not about the money but is about the quiet difference I can make in students' lives. I'll never again be naive enough to buy a white comforter.

Perhaps it is because now I anticipate grief in my future, as I experience the loss of loved ones, watch my parents age, and wait for cancer to creep into my path, as it has for so many I know, Perhaps it is because I don't know if I will have a retirement filled with cross country travel and Elder hostel trips. I timidly review my retirement savings statements, afraid to do the math. I fake laugh back at my colleagues and friends who count down the days until their kids leave for college because we are already having meetings about Caro's future , which will likely involve her living with us or certainly near us for the rest of our lives. And, then what? For some reason, dreaming about kitchen back splash tiles just doesn't seem as exciting as it used to when in the back of my head I'm worried about what will happen to my special needs child after I die.

It's an odd feeling to teeter in the middle, not knowing what is to come and knowing that I can never go back. It's heart wrenching to realize that, in looking back, the reality wasn't as good as the anticipation but, it was actually still pretty damn good. It's scary to know that the firsts of the future aren't going to be as fun or simple as the firsts of the past.

Yet, I can't be afraid. I need to channel my inner teenager, who was afraid of nothing, confident about everything, and tackled life like a smart ass.

Yet, like that favorite poet of mine, I will choose to fight the fear and instead continue to choose possibility for, "not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door."*

*If you didn't know, I love Emily Dickinson and the actual experience of taking a class at her home, and interning at her brother's house next door, was definitely as good as the anticipation of doing so.