wait for it...

Recently I’ve had several lessons in the importance of being patient and flexible.

A couple of weeks ago, Navin and I packed up our lives and got in the car for a cross-country road trip. We kept meaning to plan out our route beforehand but our time and energy was completely consumed by moving-related errands and the goodbye tour, so aside from some very preliminary research on the ‘must see’ stops along the way, we had no idea where we would be stopping, or where we’d be sleeping each night.

The first day we left Seattle a bit later than planned, and took our time stopping for a lunch break in rodeo town Ellensburg, WA and then stopped in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho for the night. People from Seattle are rolling their eyes as they read this like “that’s it? you only got there in a day?”, but here is lesson #1 from the trip: there’s a reason people do road trips in the summer and it’s not just because of the weather. Days are short in the winter and it gets dark so early! It’s not fun to drive in the dark, especially when you actually have sites and views that you want to see along the way. So we took our time and decided to be patient and take our time. We weren’t in a rush. We weren’t on a schedule. So we drove until we didn’t feel like driving anymore. We treated it like an adventure and took our time.

The first night, in our hotel room in Coeur D’Alene, we started planning out the rest of the trip and found, to our great disappointment, that Yellowstone National Park is closed in the winter. Well that was more than I could handle after all the emotions and stress of the past few weeks and after a little while of mopey disappointment, Navin and I got on our phones and computer and tried to figure out an acceptable alternative. In the end, my fatigue and disappointment got the better of me and I went to sleep and entrusted Navin to figure something out.

I’m pretty sure when we woke up the next morning the first words out of my mouth were “did you figure it out?” and he did. (He also planned out an itinerary for the rest of our trip which we didn’t exactly end up following anyway, but it felt good to have a plan and then go with the flow from there.) It turns out, in the winter the northern part of Yellowstone is open. And that in the winter, with the white white snow and leafless trees, it’s really easy to spot wildlife. So yes, we were bummed out not to be able to see the geysers like Old Faithful or a rainbow prismatic lake, but we could still go to Yellowstone, see some hot springs and wildlife and move along. We originally wanted to drive through Yellowstone to the Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But with Yellowstone closed it didn’t seem to make sense. We thought maybe we’d drive through the northern route of Yellowstone and then go through Montana to continue heading east, but due to weather conditions, the road out of Yellowstone and back into Montana was closed. So we adapted. We took a few fun stops in Montana on our way to Yellowstone, drove in to see some bison and elk (BISON! AND ELK!) and then drove around Yellowstone and continued along the way we had hoped we could. Take that, winter! Take that, road closures! We were flexible and we adapted and made the best of the situation and ended up having an amazing adventure along the way.

That lesson has been echoed since then a few times again…

I have been doing a bunch of research trying to figure out the best way to ship my mosaics for online sales and was feeling really discouraged by the high costs of shipping in Canada. Then yesterday I unexpectedly found a couple of very interesting and exciting potential opportunities to be able to work and sell my work locally.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been taking singing lessons, improv classes, and wanting to break into theatre, which has been a long-standing dream of mine since I was little. It was a dream that I was too scared to face, because I cared about it so much that I couldn’t bear the thought of failing. But with the support of some amazing people I gathered the courage and auditioned for a local production of Ragtime with The Community Players. I waited and waited to hear back. I didn’t allow myself to jump to conclusions, and get disappointed or get my hopes up too much. I was patient. I waited. And last night I found out that I got in!

Sometimes it feels like you’re in limbo forever, waiting and waiting. And sometimes there are days when you feel like you’re hitting your head against the wall and not getting anywhere. Then there are days like yesterday where everything feels like it’s falling into place, dreams are coming true and you’re so excited you can’t help but scream, dance, and jump up and down.

I’m surrounded by people going through the same thing…

My sister Tamara is waiting and waiting for her baby to arrive. But it must just be too cozy in there and there is no sign of baby a week after her due date. And you know what? They’ve had time to soak in the peace and quiet that will only be there for a limited time and take advantage of the chance to hang curtains, knit blankets and hats, and see movies. Yes the waiting is painful (literally), but nobody doubts that it will all be worth it very soon.

And my sister Jordana has been in her own state of limbo. A while ago she landed an amazing job in Toronto but was commuting from Hamilton where her Aaron was completing his residency. Recently, Aaron has been interviewing and waiting to find out about where he’d be placed for his year of emerg (that’s E.R. to you US folks). They didn’t know where he’d end up and couldn’t move forward with any plans or really plant any roots until they knew what was coming next. So they waited, and they made the best of it. And then today he found out that he’s going to be spending the next year in Toronto! So they’re moving back to the big city. They avoided the awful potential of living apart for the next year, and Jordi will no longer have a long commute to work.

Barney Stinson (from How I Met Your Mother) always says that something awesome will be “Legen- wait for it – dary”. Sometimes you need to ‘wait for it’ but it will be worth it in the end…

“Everything will be all right in the end… if it’s not all right then it’s not yet the end.” – Sonny, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel