“Sometimes life guides us and sometimes we take life by the horns. But one thing is for sure, no matter how well organized we are, or how well we plan, we can always expect the unexpected.” (Brandon Jenner)
The other morning I watched a squirrel dangling head down from a branch of the fir tree outside my window, adeptly dislodging cones that made a loud plonk on the metal roof of the shed below before bouncing to the ground, from whence this industrious rodent could properly deconstruct them and “squirrel” their seeds (pun intended) away for the winter. Meanwhile, from the comfort of my bed, I wanted nothing to do with the coming colder months.
Witnessing this squirrel’s intensity of purpose prompted me to consider how proactive I am about preparing for what lies ahead, on so many levels. While I wasn’t exactly a ’dab hand’ at earning Brownie badges, I seem to have adopted their motto: “Be Prepared” to a fault. “Be Prepared” as in imagining the worst case scenarios and making contingency plans for the latter. (If not also creating self-fulfilling prophesies.)
In practical terms that translates, for example, to having everything from bandaids to antihistamines to two pair of goggles, a couple of bathing caps, a tube of defogger, a UV shirt, a ball cap and perhaps roll-up visor, at least two pair of sunglasses — for bright and dull light — and for the past nineteen months, a couple of masks that get coated with sand and sunscreen, oh, yes, a tube of sunscreen or two in my beach bag, in addition to a separate bag holding my flippers and snorkel gear, and perhaps a 1.5 ml wetsuit top, hood and gloves, depending on the time of year. Oh. And also a change of clothes in case I emerge from the pool, lake, or ocean feeling cold.
All this preparation prompted one of my swim buddies to recommend I hire a gear sherpa, a caddie who could hand me the right piece of gear to help get myself in-and-out of the water expediently. (She also couldn’t resist pointing out that, despite these contingency plans, I never seem to have a swim cap that stays on, or swim goggles that don’t leak or fog.) I was crushed. To think of it — I’ll never get a latent Browie badge for swim-preparedness, despite my best efforts. This being the case, what does it say about how prepared I am for the changes brought on by my current age and stage. The winter, as it were, of my life?
Some of you, dear readers, may be slightly ahead, or behind me on this aging trajectory, (or not even in the same ballpark, in which case you can stop reading) and you may have varying degrees of command over your faculties, but ultimately all of us are confronted with our mortality. Autumn presents me with this reality more so than even my birthdays, because it coincides with other endings that I lament keenly. The carefree days of summer fun with children, and now grandchildren, segue into school schedules, homework-that’s-way-above-my-pay-grade, and a plethora of extracurricular activities. Aka less and less time to spare for me! You’d think I’d be past all that by the time I was seventy. And I am. To a large degree. But as a veteran mother and now grandmother, my mental calendar-keeper is still traumatized by September. Also June and December. Like my bushy-tailed neighbor, aka squirrel, if you just tuned in, I get a little frantic about planning for the coming winter ’famine’.
But I see a message in the glorious yellow maple leaves falling languidly to the ground, across the deck from me. The tree cannot resist this annual shedding of its finery any more than I can resist the inevitable decline in my memory, reflexes and energy. The clouds drifting across the robin’s-egg-blue sky cannot resist the motion of the wind. Or the mountains resist the coming coating of snow.
But there is one advantage that I have, which is to exercise my power of choice. The capacity to choose my attitude to whatever is happening. Accept “what is” and perhaps recruit my imagination to make the changes as positive as possible.
I can lament summer’s end, or embrace “soup and sweater” weather. I seldom crave a hearty stew any time from June to September, but nothing whets my appetite better than a slow-cooked beef daube on a rainy weekend in November. Just as the seasons of the calendar bring with them certain welcome pleasures, so too there are seasons of my life that offer both consolation (for my figurative loss of leaves), and hint at new discoveries just out of reach. Unexpected encounters, adventures, invitations and ideas that might come into my life at any time. The kinds of changes that I would welcome, instead of hiding under the covers from.
So for the time being, I’ve revised my “be prepared” motto to “expect the unexpected”. A variation of “plan for the worst and hope for the best”, only without devoting too much time to the planning and instead investing energy in best-case scenarios. Or simply believing, as in the old Beatles hit ”Let It Be”…“There will be an answer, let it be-ee.”
P.S. I almost dropped a very loud F-bomb when the third unsolicited political-candidate-call interrupted the writing of this blog on ’expecting the unexpected’. Oh, the irony…