We hope and work to control our hours and days and weeks. Yet, we never know all that is in store for us, or our loved ones. Life is life — anything can happen on any given day. God is in control, many of us believe. Or fate. Or destiny.

The bed of my pickup swings sideways on the icy, four-lane highway. The truck and I spin. A blur of white snowbanks and grey sky fly by. Here come the headlights of the approaching cars. Seconds ago, they were behind me. Now they are ahead of me.

Spinning southbound down Route 1, on the coast of Maine. Nothing to do but hold onto the steering wheel, try not to make it worse by over-correcting — and hope.

One full rotation. Maybe two. This feels like a long time, but must have been only seconds. Maybe 5. Maybe 10.

Then it is over. I’m stopped. No slam. No crash. No pain. Exhale.

I regain control of my red Toyota truck, and slowly drive the rest of the way to work.

A Dangerous Spin

This memory, this fear of spinning out-of-control on the ice and crashing has been on my mind lately— and very much this week, as I work on this post from a loved one’s hospital room overlooking Lake Erie.

I’ve been writing the story these last few weeks of what happened on an intense, February weekend more than a decade ago while I was going through a divorce. That weekend marked “bottom” in my grief over the marriage, an emotional crash and sense of a turnaround point.

But when I dug deeper — following the smart advice of brilliant novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro to write not what actually happened but about what I was afraid would happen — I recalled that powerless sensation of spinning out on the ice on the highway, facing a head-on collision with the oncoming traffic.

Life felt like that. Then I took back control over my life.

That February weekend during my “divorce year”, the forecast called for freezing rain. I was staying alone at a friend’s house on a twisty-turny mountain road in central Pennsylvania and feared I would be trapped by the ice on impassable roads — just like the few days in Maine during the Ice Storm of 1998 when I was stuck in a cold, dark house at the top of a steep driveway.

I knew I could not risk being trapped alone in my friend’s house.

That January in Maine, sheets of freezing rain fell for days, encasing the trees, roads, cars and power lines inside ice. Tree limbs and power lines buckled and snapped under the weight, trapping my roommate and I in our rented cape house at the top of a steep and twisty driveway, with no power or water. We were safe. Just cold and hungry.

On the second night of freezing rain, a hot pizza seemed like a good idea. I called the takeout place two miles away. No problem, they said. They had power — or a generator.

But I could not get there. I walked down the path to the home of the kind couple who were our neighbors and landlords and borrowed their Volvo station wagon.

Skiing in Control

Ski in control, my dad would say, when I was a little kid learning to ski. I learned to tune into how my feet feel as my skis glide over packed snow within the control of their sharp edges  to turn or stop — and what it feels like to be too fast or slipping on the ice, at or beyond the the edge of my control.

The idea, of course, when you feel yourself slipping is to regain control as quickly as possible and before a crash.

Later, when I learned to drive, I learned to tune into the feel of whether my tires were gripping the pavement — or not.

So when the heavy, borrowed Volvo began to slip and slide across the icy road during the ice storm in Maine, I decided a pizza was not worth the risk after all, and turned around.

Safely parked back in their driveway, relieved to have avoided disaster, I returned the keys to my neighbor-landlords and trudged back up the hill, content with warming another cold can of beans over the fireplace. We would not starve.

The clouds receded a day or so later, letting the sun’s warmth melt the ice in the driveway enough for our safe passage to the home of a friend who had power and hot water. We warmed up with hot showers and soup and returned home with groceries.

The story I’m compelled to tell from a later time, that February weekend during my divorce, is about the sense of already spinning, already feeling out of control and re-taking control, literally re-taking the wheel. This unfolded with a lot of tears, breaking a promise to a friend, and receiving a hairdresser’s kind touch, encouraging words and spirit-lifting haircut.

It also took the help of friends to break free of someone else’s big, ugly couch over-powering my living space.

Pretty full weekend. (I’m still working on that piece, which I think will be part of the prologue for an upcoming book.)

A Fragile Sense of Control

Control is a funny thing, isn’t it?

I don’t know about you, but I need to feel a certain sense of control over my life. A certain calm, quiet, order and predictability. That sensation of spinning out of control is maddening, unsafe, dangerous.

And yet, control is a necessary illusion.

Every January, I chuckle over that New Year craving to plan out the year and make resolutions. We pretend to know what the year will bring. Those fresh, blank calendar pages of the months or year might seem like ours alone to fill.

Kind of — but not really. We hope and work to control our hours and days and weeks. Yet, we never know all that is in store for us, or our loved ones. Life is life — anything can happen on any given day. God is in control, many of us believe. Or fate. Or destiny. Perhaps the Universe.

Now, when I look back on the intense emotional pain of that February weekend during my divorce year, I believe there was a purpose: I had to quickly move through that grief to get ready for a new life with the right guy, full of family, stepmom responsibilities, new adventures.

Who knew my greatest fear would soon shift to become the safe passage of my stepsons through their days Read Rule Number One is Come Home Safe.

The hairdresser told me it would all get better. I believed her. Had she told me the details, and that by Christmas I would meet the love of my life and feel part of a new family, I would not have believed her.

The more people we love, the more we discover work we love to do, responsibilities we are meant to take on, places we love to be — the more complicated those calendar pages become.

We need to plan as if we are in complete control, and adjust for the realities of lives unfolding outside of our control.

One Finite Life

My mom has been and continues to be my best teacher for how to plan, organize, manage — and generally live in a state of control, or at least controlling what you can.

We move through an unpredictable life, adjusting to stay in control, dancing with an illusion of control.

And still, despite her guidance, I must constantly remind myself: Just one of me. Just 24 hours in a day. Seven days a week. Fifty-two a year. One finite life.

This week, I’ve spent many hours at the hospital with a beloved family member, doing what I can to help. Any time spent in a hospital reminds me of how fragile, finite and remarkable life is. Simultaneously, this time challenges my schedule and inspires me to double down to get my work done.

This has been a week that reminds me: Life is life. Anything can happen on any given day.

If you are reading this, it means I found a quiet spot to finish and post this, to keep up with my work before my schedule spins out of control, to catch and keep up before I’m spinning out on the ice, frustrated and fearful of a crash of some sort.

I only know for sure what is in the past, what I envision for the future — and a few tricks to control what I can.

I wish you peace.

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