Sidetracked

I was supposed to be heading to Santi’s house for dinner when I went out to get the waste cans from the curb and walked past the grape tomatoes and picked a bowlful, which made me notice the marigolds that needed to deadheaded, which reminded me that the roses had been in want of deadheading all week, and then I thought I should take Santi some zinnias, and that’s when I noticed the monarch begging to be photographed. I suppose it could be a good thing to stick with the plan, but so much beauty would be missed. To say nothing of the tasks that wouldn't get done.

I have never been very good at making plans. Well, that isn’t quite accurate. Actually, I’m overly good at making plans--and lists--(I AM a "J" on the Myers Briggs scale). I’m just not very good at sticking to them. I wonder, sometimes, how my life might have been different if I had stuck to the original plan. Or at least the second plan. Or the third. Boring, I think. I kind of feel sorry for people who make a plan in early adulthood, even childhood, and don’t stray from it their whole lives. And I kind of envy them knowing what they want and going for it, bypassing all those bothersome distractions calling them to take a divergent path.

I took the Myers Briggs Type Indicator when I was in graduate school, just before my 40th birthday. I was off the scale on the rigid vs. la-la / J vs. P preference. It wasn't long after I graduated that I made my first big stray from The Plan, and then another, and then still another. When I retook the inventory a few months ago, twenty years later,  I am nearly center on that indicator. I consider that a victory. I am allowing myself to be more spontaneous. Or maybe I just answered the questions differently, because I want to be more flexible. In any case, there is something to be said for knowing how you want to be and doing what you can to reroute undesirable habits or traits. We are not stuck, unless we allow ourselves to be.

Of course I realize there is a difference between getting sidetracked in the garden and choosing the road less traveled. The word sidetracked implies that you eventually get back to where you started. I did get to Santi's house, and not too far behind schedule. When we take the other path we can't ever go back, as Robert Frost says. We can sometimes, if we want, get back to the original plan; but we are different for having taken the divergent road. Which I guess begs the question, is the road different? Sometimes I wish I had not taken that side road that beckoned to me, but that is not to say I have regrets. I did what I needed to do. Just sometimes I wish I hadn't needed to, or that I hadn't noticed the other path. But there is no sense in going down that road. "I am telling this with a sigh..."

I am reading "Poser: My life in twenty- three yoga poses," recommended to me by Yogi Julie, in part because it takes place on Phinney Ridge in Seattle--up the hill from Green Lake where Emma lived when she moved across the country. The author of the memoir and her husband seem to see themselves as sidetracked from their writing careers by the birth of their child and parenthood. As the idea of sidetracking has been swirling in my head this week, I recognize that motherhood is the one thing in my post-college life that was in my original plan. I am so glad I didn't get take a divergent road before that was fulfilled.

When I empty my compost container this week I discover the Brussels sprouts I had given up for lost--as in not going to bear fruit--and thrown on the compost a while back, is still alive, and has little sprout nubbins up the stalk. Just like it is supposed to. What the heck, I replant it in the garden. I chose a little sidetrack for it; maybe it needed the cooler, richer soil. Who knows. And who knows when a seemingly random sidetrack is just what we need.

It finally gets cool enough to sit on my deck this week after work--with mosquito spray. I want to run for my camera when I see the setting sun slanting through the center of the tree grove in the back yard, the tops and bottoms in shadow; but I realize that some things just can’t be photographed. They are meant to be soaked up in the moment, and not saved for eternity...except in my mind’s eye. Like the rising sun casting light in the very tippy top of the trees as I sit in that same chair with my morning coffee. Or the deafening cicada chorus that starts at exactly 7:58 PM. Or the smell of basil leaves beside my chair. Or rosemary when I pull my hand across it as I walk past a bush hanging over the sidewalk. Or the moon. (Okay, this random bit of writing is a tangent. An editor would cut it.)

I said in last week's post that I do believe if you don't make plans for yourself, others will make them for you. Make your plans, but stay watchful and open. Exercise your J and stay open to your P. No one is one or the other. Strive for balance in all things. We can't know ever who we might have been if we had taken a different path. All we have is who we are. My hope is that I live fully the path that I am on and watch for all the forks, peering into the undergrowth, in case I might want to follow one and see where it leads. 

               "I shall be telling this with a sigh
               Somewhere ages and ages hence:
               Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
               I took the one less traveled by,
               And that has made all the difference."