today, my planner for 2021 arrived in the mail.
i am afraid to open it.
i wondered for a long time how i would feel about this day. i used to be such a planner geek. i'm sure i've written elsewhere how in normal times, i'd have four or five planning notebooks going at once: one for the kids, one for me, one for menu-planning, one for long-term projects, one for work projects, etc, etc. i used to go into michaels just to flip through the planners, with their bold covers and sets of incentivizing stickers. maybe it's a holdover from my school days, but they just smelled like promise and opportunity to me. it's a new year! who knows what you'll achieve! who knows what wonderful new things will happen!
how i ache for that sense of wonder and excitement now.
i remember how excited i was when my planner came last year. i couldn't wait to open the box (i never can). i pay for the fancy jewish kind, with all the holidays in it, and the candlelighting times, and spaces for spiritual reflection and menus and budgeting and personal growth (happy to share where i got it if you want!). i can't get enough of this stuff.
and last year was an especially exciting year for me: 2020 was going to be the year of Baby #4. the night the planner came, i sat down and diligently copied all my appointment dates into the monthly grids, my due date, the kids' school calendar, my goals for every month.
so, so much of it was baby related. i wrote down reminders to myself to go through baby clothes. to wipe down our stroller and high chair. to buy a carseat. as if i would forget any of these things! but i was so excited.
on the june overview page, i wrote "new baby!" in big sloppy letters. in my personal goals, i debated how i would adjust to having a newborn in the house again, how i would still make time for the other kids, my marriage, my physical and mental health...everything. i was going to balance it all so well. i just had to have a plan.
needless to say, i wrote all this down before coronavirus -- before i had even the beginning of a clue what an infamous dark joke 2020 would become.
the first time my planner goes abruptly blank this year was in march, right around purim time. i remember whispered conversations about whether or not to close schools, and a sense of dread i did not understand. i remember showing up to megillah reading on purim day - as it turns out, the last time i would go to shul in 2020 - in tears, already overwhelmed and anxious, even though i had no idea yet even what i - or the rest of the world - would be facing.
the next few months are too painful for me to even look back on. but i don't need to look to remember the desperation of those pages: scratchy black lines through all my best-laid plans, hastily scrawled schedules in marker or crayon or whatever writing utensils my kids hadn't commandeered, question marks everywhere. eventually i came up with a rigorous schedule (remember when we were all doing those color-blocked homeschool schedules?) broken into half-hour increments.
i was so determined to succeed. i was so determined to maintain control. and discipline. i was so determined that we would all get through it in one piece.
and then the curveball i never saw coming, in a year that no one ever saw coming: we didn't get through it in one piece. we didn't all make it. suddenly, nonsensically, the baby i was days away from bringing home was dead. then buried. then only a memory.
the summer of 2020 went blank for me. in my head, in my planner. i remember parts of it, but most is just white noise. i didn't write in my planner. i didn't make plans. for the first time in my life, there seemed to be no point in making plans. why bother to make plans in a world where life can turn upside down in minutes? why bother to make plans in a world where healthy babies die?
one of my favorite songs has a set of lyrics that i always loved, but i don't think truly understood, until this year: "every plan is just a tiny prayer to father time."
everything i thought i knew felt like a lie. everything i had ever planned seemed laughably naive, almost cute. who was i to have goals, for myself or anyone else? i hadn't even been able to keep my own baby alive. the one thing i should have been able to do without even thinking about it, let alone planning it. that should have been as easy as breathing.
sometimes, it felt like the only thing that really mattered. and the control and discipline i was so proud of had meant nothing then. so what was the point?
i don't remember when i took this year's planner off the bookshelf again. i think it was september. there were a lot of things i needed to keep track of for the kids' school, and for the holidays coming up. my baby was dead, but i still needed to cook for rosh hashana and sukkot. my baby was dead, but i still needed to buy groceries and get my car's oil changed. the world didn't stop. and my ability to remember things on my own hadn't improved.
might as well write it down on a piece of paper with the date on it, i remember thinking.
i carefully did not look back at the blank months. i still haven't.
as the months went on, little by little, bits of my old self crept back on to the pages. when my kids' school temporarily closed for corona and we were stuck at home again, i wrote a little list of positive thinking mantras for myself, just as i would have done earlier in the year, before menucha's death.
on the back page of the month of november, i brainstormed about who i wanted to be as a person. not what i wanted to be - a published author, a loving and present mother to four children, things i now knew i couldn't really control - but who i wanted to be: a person who saw beauty in the world, a person who felt joy, a person who loved and cherished the people in her life, a person who could cry and laugh in the same heartbeat, a person who lived a life worth living.
i wrote it down as a reminder to myself, on the days when i felt like i could never become that person, because all i could imagine was the person i felt like in that moment: a person who had been broken, completely, irreversibly, forever.
i wrote it down because i know now that i can control nothing else in my life, except, possibly, this.
but i won't lie: despite all of that, i haven't opened the new planner yet. i am still more afraid than excited for what is to come.
i still struggle with that sense of powerlessness: what is the point of making plans when i am so utterly at the mercy of the universe? it feels arrogant to write down dates and goals and think that i have any capacity to make things happen. or maybe it feels like bad luck? i can't even describe it. i don't want to write down my hopes and dreams because i can't bear the thought of striking them through again. i can't bear the thought of that total blankness.
i want to embrace this new year. i want to live it to its fullest.
but i am still too afraid to open the book.