THE POSTSCRIPT, Carrie Classon

Since my niece, Isabelle, was little, she was always a planner. She was the only kindergartner I knew who laid out her outfit for the following day on her bed the night before.

“Which tights do you think I should wear?” she would ask me, very seriously. She would have her outfit laid out on the bed with two competing pairs of tights, and I would be tasked with determining which color would best complete the ensemble. I usually thought that either would work nicely. But I admired how Isabelle was ready for the next demanding day at kindergarten. At some point early on, Isabelle had grasped the idea that the future was something that could be planned, and she ran with it.

We would be on our way to a restaurant with my mom and dad, and Isabelle would be overwhelmed with excitement for what the day would bring. “After we have lunch, Grandpa, can we play downstairs? And after that, can we go swimming? And after that —”

This would go on and on. If she wasn’t stopped, Isabelle could easily have mapped out the rest of our lives on the drive to lunch.

“I’m not planning anything!” my father (Isabelle’s grandpa) would finally say.

I knew this was a lie; my dad has always been a planner. He always said that at least half the fun of a vacation was planning it. I come from a family of planners, and so the fact that Isabelle enjoyed anticipating the future so much should come as no surprise. And while it could get a little tiresome, having every moment planned out in excruciating detail, I understood where Isabelle was coming from. It’s nice to have something to look forward to.

Isabelle just got back from a year in Argentina. She loved it, she tells me. I wrote to her while she was still there and asked if she wanted to go to a musical when she got back. She said that she did. We went out to dinner and then we saw a musical together, just as we used to before she went away. I knew she was sad to leave Argentina, and the musical gave her something to look forward to.

I buy tickets to musicals months in advance and look forward to the event with happy anticipation. My husband, Peter, can tell you when we will travel to Mexico many months before we do. I have a reasonably good idea of what I will be working on for months in advance. The good part about this is that I always have something to look forward to. The trouble with it is that sometimes, by the time the event arrives, it is almost an anticlimax. I wonder if my life lacks spontaneity. I worry that I am falling into a rut.

But there is an old saying: “Man plans, God laughs.” And it’s true, much of my life does not turn out the way I expect. I never know what the future will bring. As good as Isabelle is at planning tomorrow’s outfit, the direction her life will take is still unknown. The same is true for all of us.

So maybe it is a good thing to have small plans to look forward to with happy anticipation. My big plans will often have to change, and life will hand out disappointments, no matter how well I plan. It’s good to have some small, sweet moments I can look forward to. And it’s important to be wearing the right color tights when they happen.

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