What if?

"Everything we've ever needed was right here, right now"

Time has been speeding up, ticking faster than I can keep up. Days have been chasing the week away, and months running just behind. The old me showed up larger than life yesterday. I started asking myself questions like, “what if I don’t finish in time”, “what if the farm doesn’t sell”, and the very worst, “what if the store doesn’t make it.” I reached for my phone to catch my fall. I was envisioning Alice as she stumbled down the rabbit hole with no end in sight. The recounting of her descent to nowhere with the strangest oddities passing her by getting caught on roots protruding from the dirt sides materialized in my mind. I waited for my sister to pick up her phone as my vision into Wonderland grew even more fantastic. Nothing these days feels remotely real or even close to any plan I’ve ever had.

“Hello” she said. I smiled. Thank God, she answered. My sister works remotely and I’m never quite sure if she’ll be in a zoom meeting or not. I jumped right in. I purged my crazy through the phone hoping to get it the farthest away from myself as possible. She’s always been my voice of reason, light in the dark, and calm and steady when I not only needed to stay in the race but win it. I urged her to help me not fall off the cliffs of insanity. “He didn’t fall? Inconceivable!” Vizzini believed he had everything figured out in the Princess Bride, and why not he was intelligent, charming, and full with a sense of self. Unlike the masked man, I don’t always feel so sure footed, and can fall victim to self sabotage and doubt just like many do. My breathing slowed as my sister talked me back from the edge of the cliff. She recounted the countless times I pulled off “miracles” of getting shit done at the last minute, reminded me of how hot the housing market still is, and highlighted the store’s success in our small community in Maine. She finished with, “you’ll figure out where to live, what makes the most sense.”

I nodded as she spoke even though she couldn’t see me. I was reassuring myself. But you have to know that this is the sister who has always believed in me even when I didn’t. She was convinced I was going to appear on Oprah’s talk show with my business Jellybeans Interactive, laughed as I shared the many sketches I had created for SNL, agreed to be my guest on the red carpet when my books were made into movies, and certain I would be a household name before she died. None of these things have happened but she still remains my biggest champion to all the crazy I come up with when dreaming out loud. And while she never dismisses any of my latest and greatest ideas, she’s always there reminding me of what I have accomplished. She let me finish venting and then she reminded me to breathe. The sky wasn’t falling, nothing had to be perfect, and I’m not alone. We all have our journeys to make, adventures to take, and Cliffs of Insanity to climb. Most of us will fall at least once or twice, it’s just how it is.

I crashed onto my bed with my phone still in hand. We had made our way into common ground, what to watch on Netflix. We landed on “This is Us” a binge worthy drama about a family doing the best they could with the cards they were dealt. I changed out of my clothes into my favorite surfing hoody and oversized grey sweatpants and replaced my contacts with glasses. Ruby curled up at the bottom of my bed while I curled up in fetus position with the fifth book in the Outlander series. My sister asked if I had gotten to a certain part yet, she was watching it on tv. I couldn’t focus to even know if I had. She had single handedly led me down from the Cliffs of Insanity back to the peaceful farm where Wesley was simply a farm boy and resembled nothing of the Dread Pirate Roberts, and Buttercup? Buttercup was a beautiful young woman in love without a care in the world other than following her heart.

I took a deep breath in and asked my sister if we could talk tomorrow. I’m not alone, the farm is going to sell, and A Little Something is celebrating its fifth year in business at the end of this month. Life is good, life is complicated but worth figuring out. Aaron took most of the day to paint the patio decks, Abby stopped by to help me weed the garden beds and take a quick dip in the pool, and the store is experiencing record growth in June. There is nothing to be afraid of, only love to embrace and celebrate. I closed my eyes for a minute to rest them, I could hear Libby’s friends voices as they gathered around the pool and fire pit, it must have lulled me off to sleep. I opened my eyes to the sound of Ruby sounding the alarm that someone was in the house. I sat up as they asked Ruby, “where is your mother?” It made me smile. I have nothing to worry about only so much to embrace and be thankful for.