Jan 7

Jan 7 ISO: Bruce Willis

This picture was taken in January 2016, the day before I went back to work from my maternity leave with Adelaide. I was already looking for a new job and was ready to make a name for myself in the NYC events/hospitality world. Years later, I barely recognize this woman, her life or dreams.

The new year has me thinking about the future again. Or maybe it’s the anticipation of the adoption, or that I’m turning 40 this year, or my journal prompting me to envision my dream life, or Miguel talking about our long term financial plans. Thinking about the future is pretty normal for most folks this time of year, I think. But I stopped all future planning, dreaming, even contemplating, when Adelaide was alive. All immediate plans were tentative - as long as Adelaide was doing ok we would try and be there. Something further out? Can I let you know closer to the date? A vision board for what I wanted my life to look like five years from now? Ha! That’s cute.

Five years goes by so quickly yet can seem so far away. Five years was more than all of Adelaide’s life. But also, within a five year span, Miguel booked Hamilton, Adelaide was diagnosed with epilepsy, I quit my career, we moved from New Jersey to Chicago, we experienced amazing once-in-a-lifetime events thanks to Hamilton, fought harder than I ever thought I could for Adelaide’s life until she died in my arms, Miguel transferred to Broadway, a global pandemic hit and we moved back to New Jersey.

I mean, if you had told me all of that would happen before it did I might have locked myself in a cramped closet, a la Moira Rose, and never come out. So, how do I even begin to think about the future, especially when I know how little control over it I have? Well, consider this me trying to figure that out.

As far as I can tell our lives are little asteroid magnets and at any given moment, an asteroid can be drawn into our lives and leave a shattering crater in it’s wake with little to no warning. We can’t predict what will be destroyed or what may even strengthen as a result - but the asteroids will come and they will change the landscape of our lives forever.

During Adelaide’s life, my world endured a barrage of asteroids. Future thought was impossible because I was constantly trying to survive each impact knowing another was close behind. After she died, there was certainly more time to recover but how could I ever imagine or plan for a world where she didn’t exist? It wasn’t denial as much as it was stubborn resistance to a future without her.

Two years later and finally the thought of planning for the future doesn’t quite make me itchy all over. Sure, my heart begins to race and my anxiety kicks in. Who do I think I am trying to make plans? Or have dreams? You know how little control you have! How everything could change with a text, call, or asteroid! Yet, still, I have been finding myself coming back to this line of future thought again and again.

The difference between my planning for the future when I was a career woman with two supposedly healthy children and an out-of-work actor husband and now - is that I know the asteroids are out there. I thought I knew they existed before, but I was under the impression that they were rare and fairly rationed. I thought Elvis was my life’s big asteroid, with that in my past I could move on free and clear. My naïveté was breathtaking.

So, the asteroids are there, they can hit at any time and make my world utterly unrecognizable. I don’t have my own personal Bruce Willis to blast the asteroids, Armageddon style, out of the sky, and preparation outside of the basics - don’t eat junk, wear a seatbelt, apply sunscreen - is futile. But that doesn’t mean the future is not worth planning, thinking or dreaming about. It just means we have to be ok with charting a new course if our old one becomes a crater or even pivoting entirely to a new plan and dream.

As I slowly let planning and dreaming back into my mind I will do so, as I have taken on every other day since Adelaide’s diagnosis: in inchstones. Because let me tell you, going from limited plans to goals & dreams is a lot to ask. What even are my dreams? What dreams can I feasibly work toward? I know I want a happy and healthy physical family of four that honors Adelaide’s life. I want to financially contribute to my family again in a meaningful way and have a gorgeous home with massive closets, ooh and a pool! I’m on a roll now! We can live somewhere that allows our snowblower to rust away and Tabasco never dies and Sriracha stops destroying my home and everything in it…. ok, clearly, not all dreams are going to come true (looking at you Sriracha).

What I have to remember is that it doesn’t mean I’ve failed if my dreams don’t become reality. Or if an asteroid blasts through my atmosphere and chews it to pieces. Or, if I simply change my mind. After all, a dream can’t come true if I don’t come up with it in the first place. So, in this new year I toast to our dreams, and adaptable plans and fewer asteroids… and maybe our own personal Bruce Willises.

Cheers!