The day starts fine. Just another mundane Monday. An uneventful morning of pushing my kid out the door and buckling down to a laundry list of work to dos. Slowly, the day derails.
The power goes out. A work project escalates in scope and my daily to dos are suddenly unchecked. My lunchtime walk evaporates into thin air. Work bleeds directly into cooking a pre-practice dinner to satisfy the bottomless pit in my tween son. A missing baseball cap and the need to eat a third round of tacos leaves me scurrying to get us out the door on time for practice. As we hop into the car, I discover my moonroof was left open… in the rain. My clothes are instantly soaked. First world problems for sure – but I slowly start coming unhinged.
The recovering perfectionist in me hates being late. I accelerate every so softly, torn between getting to practice on time and being a rule follower. Afterall, Highway 2 is littered with speed traps. Nothing on my rural route signals the Northland’s favorite season – road construction – until it is too late. Turns out a bridge is out with no warning or detour in sight.
My heart rate spikes. My Garmin signals that I’m stressed. “Could this day get any worse,” I mutter under my breath, daring the universe to keep coming at me. Meantime, my son barely acknowledges the disruption, refusing to be distracted from the game on his phone. This only irritates me more.
“You realize we’re going to be extremely late for practice, don’t you?” I say, in hopes of eliciting some concern for our current predicament.
My son finally engages, lifting his head from his phone disgusted by the interruption. “Mom, who cares. It isn’t like you can control a bridge being washed out. We’ll get there when we get there,” he says before resuming his game.
As-if. I despise the perspective being spewed by my 12-year-old. Yet, somehow he’s right. I channel a series of inappropriate comebacks in my head while I turn around and make my way back to the unmarked detour, feeling defeated.
A voice of reason quiets the comebacks. An old Elizabeth Gilbert Instagram post starts playing in my head, “You are not a Fortune 500 company.”
I embrace these words even as society continuously tries to teach us we are nothing more than that. Do more, be more, and do it with effortless perfection. Always bring more credits than debits. You owe that to society. It is no wonder an ordinary Monday full of disruptions, aka life, feels overwhelming. That somehow not anticipating a power outage or a washed-out bridge says something about me as a mother, wife, coworker, and person. Somedays this message is merely annoying. On others exhausting. Yet somehow it always persists.
We arrive at practice late. My son jumps out, indifferent to the time space continuum. Within seconds he’s joking with his friends awaiting his turn in the batting practice line, the coach barely acknowledging his late arrival.
I exhale, and for the moment, I’m reminded everything is okay. After all, tomorrow is a new opportunity for the universe to remind me that I’m perfectly imperfect. And for now, that’s enough.