Adventure.

         This morning, I woke up grumpy and mumbled the words, “I don’t want to go to work. I just want this day to be over.” As with anyone who experiences a traumatic event, the date that your life completely changes may as well be etched in stone inside your head forever. There’s nothing you can do to make the date pass except pick yourself up and use every ounce of your willpower to get through the day. All I wanted to do was curl up under my heated electric blanket and watch House of Cards while eating Cabot’s Seriously Sharp Vermont Cheddar Cheese with Wheat Thins. Alas, this dream was not an option because it was crazy sock day at school, which was fitting, because I obviously wore the Queen’s googly eye crab socks. Needless to say, I (reluctantly) grabbed my coffee and my lunchbox, headed out the door, and began the adventure that is March 4^th. 

On this date five years ago (crazy, right? five years?), we all began a new adventure. At the time, it inevitably felt like chaos. Trying to figure out how to live our lives without Queen Jean present = obvious chaos. It was an adventure to figure out how to wake up, get out of bed, and start each day as a new day. It was an adventure to tackle birthdays, Mother’s Day, and holidays. As days have somehow quickly turned into years, I can actually say that I’m finally beginning to feel like I am figuring out this adventure. While it took me five years to realize, it’s actually quite simple: If you can wake up and remember to try your best to live each day like the Queen, then you’re bound to be ok. Figuring out how to live like a badass Queen is tough, though. It requires thinking back about how the Queen handled things and it also requires a massive support network of people to help you laugh, read People magazine, watch Ellen, wear crazy socks, and be kind to others as you give this thing called life your best attempt.

            The same year the Queen left us for a cooler place, this pretty cool guy walked (literally) into my life. He was a smart, well-traveled, lego-loving, handsome man who checked off almost every item on that list I made as a thirteen-year-old of my “dream man.” This is already sounding horribly cheesy (get it? I've still got Cabot cheese on my mind!), but stick with me. So this new adventure began and this lego-loving man, named Nick, stuck around. Nick and I have gotten to take a lot of traveling adventures. We were lucky enough to travel to Iceland where we went camping and ate copious amounts of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in between hiking to the most beautiful waterfalls. We explored Budapest and Krakow where we brushed up our knowledge of WWII history. We went to Big Bend National Park in Texas where we camped in the desert and went to sleep looking at more stars than I’ve ever seen.

           When this adventure partner of mine decided to apply to graduate school, I thought, well, what’s another adventure, right? So the adventure of MBA school began. Nick took the GMAT; I hated the GMAT and the amount of time it consumed. Nick spent lots of time online browsing lots of different programs; I daydreamed about what it would be like to live outside the state of Georgia. Nick wrote essay after essay after essay; I was one of many proofreaders [read: I was the one who determined if non-engineers could understand].

After the adventure [chaos] of preparing to apply for school, Nick then tells me he only wants to apply to one school. He says this one school is the exact program he’s looking for and if it doesn’t work out, then so be it. Obviously, at this point I think he’s crazy and I’m seriously questioning his sanity. Then, he proceeds to tell me that the other reason he's picked this one program is because he thinks it would be cool for me to live in Boston. For me to live in the city my mom went to college in. The city my mom and dad met in. The city my Nana and Pa met in. The city my aunt lives in. And, this people, is one of many reasons why I’m marrying this man.

            Ok, enough of this sap. The point of this story is that it is pretty exciting to live in this city that my parents began their own adventure in. My mom met my dad via her college roommate at Simmons College. To say my parents began their relationship together as an adventure is an extreme understatement. Shortly after graduating from college- with a degree- my mom up and moved to St. Croix with my dad! Whenever I think about this, I just laugh and laugh, because my mom would have never been pleased with this if it were my sister or me. My mom never actually revealed this whole story to me. One day I was able to put the puzzle pieces together and I remember saying to my mom, “Wait. YOU moved to St. Croix? And you weren’t even engaged yet? And you didn’t have a job when you moved there?” Her response, “Yes. And Nana and Pa were NOT happy about it. So don’t get any ideas.” So anyways, they moved to St. Croix where my dad worked on a boat and my mom was a secretary. Whenever she told me about her secretary job, she always mentioned her psychology degree from Simmons and also inserted her advice there: “Don’t be a psychology major unless you actually want to do something with psychology.” After the St. Croix adventure, my parents moved back to the US, lived in Pittsburgh, and got married.

After getting married, they trekked off to Hyde Park, NY for my dad to go to The Culinary Institute. Then, my dad got a job as a chef in Atlanta in 1985, so my parents packed up all their belongings and headed to the South in a U-Haul. My dad drove the U-Haul and my mom followed behind them in their car. Until the U-Haul broke down. They stood on the side of the road and watched all of their possessions get towed away by a tow truck. I’d like to think that in that situation, after screaming your fair share of expletives, you’d just have to remember that it’s all part of an adventure (adventure is obviously a synonym for chaos- but it sounds a hell of a lot more fun). All these adventures occurred before my sister and I were even a thought.

Now, circle ahead 30 years later to 2015. Last May, when Nick and I packed all our stuff into our U-Haul, I couldn’t help but think about all the adventures my parents had in the early years of their relationship. On our trip to Beantown, our U-Haul didn’t break down. But I did spend a large portion of the drive writing a lesson plan, in the loud cab of the U-Haul, for an interview that I had two days after this massive move (chaos or adventure? you can decide). We made it safely to Boston and unloaded all of our things into our tiny apartment on the first floor of an old, lavender colored house. And so our Boston adventure began.

            I can’t say that learning this new adventure of life without my mom is what I would have chosen. But I can say that my life has grown for the better out of this adventure. Family, friends, people I’ve met along the way, relationships that have formed, jobs I’ve had- those are the reasons why this new adventure is an adventure and not just chaos. And it takes an army of seriously amazing people to turn chaos into an adventure.