“Not all those who wander are lost,” Tolkien wrote.  Doesn’t apply to me.  I am not much of a wanderer.  I like to know where I am at all times, along with where I just was and where I’ll be in the next few minutes.  I rediscovered this trait last week in Europe as the BF led me around London and Paris with his nose for navigation, which I would give a 70/30 success rate, and I simmered more and more violently over not being told exactly what he was thinking.  And planning.  And, often, doing, for crying out loud.  The occasional times we had to double back and head in the other direction led me to grab the map from him, spend approximately fifteen seconds trying to read it, then hand it back to him in a huff.  Maps, like instruction manuals, are written in a language I don’t understand, a language that just makes me anxious, much like movers taking over my apartment.  I just want all the up in the air-ness to be over so I can be at the intended destination, preferably with my feet propped up and a glass of wine in my hand.

My perfect life’s path would consist of a straight line, with signs along the way providing ETAs and bathroom information.  My life’s path has been nothing of the sort.  (Insert God’s loving laugh here.)

Now that we’re back in Atlanta, I am again confronted with an unfamiliar system of roads and locations along them, and this time I’m not leaving in a week; this time, I have to pay attention and remember what I’m doing.  Learn from my double-backs. Today, the BF and I were to meet at noon at the tag office so we could get lovely peach plates for our new cars. Helpless child that I am, I asked him (accusingly, a little–it was early) before he left for work how to get to the office.  He pointed to our kitchen island (!), where he had printed out a map of the route I would take.  I huffed until I picked it up and found, underneath, written instructions that even I, with my Directional Allergies, could understand.  He really is picking up on this Taking Care of Me business.

So a few hours later I headed out to meet him.  I felt lost the whole way, certain I had taken every wrong turn possible (I hadn’t), unfamiliarity-produced anxiety burning a hole in my stomach.  Each drive, be it a five-minute one or an hour one, is an exercise in faith for me (at this point, though, what isn’t?).  I exit the car with a blood pressure substantially higher than that with which I entered it, and my shoulders level with my ears.  It feels like the landscape is an obstacle course laid out with the ultimate goal being my confusion.  The world, as usual, is against me when I’m not in my comfort zone.  I have a feeling that God and I are going to have some interesting conversations in my car.

The drive home was a little more eventful than the drive there.  My new tag resting on the seat behind me, I navigated using the map I had memorized from the BF’s phone until I realized I didn’t know which final turn to take.  Trader Joe’s, you bastard, are you on the right or the left? I had been so proud of heading in the correct direction on two three-digited interstates, and even getting my fifty cents in the basket on the toll plaza, and now this.  I went left.  And soon realized I should have gone right.  So I busted a uey and redirected.  After leaving TJ’s I had one more thing left to do before heading home: my inaugural gas fill-up. Getting gas is like drying my hair: one of those things that I hate to do, but if avoided the results are disastrous.  Why I passed by all of the five hundred gas stations directly on my path, I can’t tell you.  What I can tell you is that there are no gas stations in the immediate one-mile-radius of my apartment.  Nor are there any in the area I drove to next, headed west under the interstate.  I entered what must be the largest neighborhood in the whole damn city, a gas-station vacuum of mythical proportions in a town with millions of drivers.  Maybe I’ll get a look at some potential houses for us, I thought, my frustration not yet reaching blinding levels; then I realized that the other thing besides fuel options that this neighborhood lacked was any residence under 5,000 square feet with a non-castle facade.

Seriously? I asked God, foreshadowing the way most of our cartalks will begin.

I made it home unscathed other than by my default frustration with myself and the world for not running more smoothly, i.e., according to my specifications.  Tomorrow I get to tackle another path, this time to my new job.  8 am rush hour in Atlanta on the first day of work.  What could go wrong?

On Saturday, the Yankee Mom and The Mom were in town and we accompanied The Sis for crib-shopping.  After passing over multiple options, she saw one across the store and made a beeline for it.  “This is it,” she said, and everyone approved.  The salesman came over and confirmed that it was available in her preferred color.  Everything was going right.  Then it came time to sign for the final order, and I had a flashback to five years ago as The Sis said, “Do you think it’s the right one?”  Cut to us, same quartet, in a bridal shop a few miles away.  The Sis had just tried on her dream wedding gown, and its designer just happened to be in the store that day.  She okayed the alterations that The Sis suggested, and The Dad even okayed the bill.  The final transaction was about to occur when The Sis turned to me and asked, “Do you think it’s the right one?”  Knowing that she and I are the type who painstakingly arrive at every decision we make after careful consideration of all options, lists of pros and cons, anxiety and tears, then at the end still feel like we’re leaping off a huge cliff, I told her the truth–and what I know she secretly needed to hear.  “Yes.”  I repeated the affirmative response at the crib store.

I was the type who, growing up, would have fingers holding multiple spots in Choose Your Own Adventure books because I couldn’t stand the thought of choosing wrong.  I read the last page of every book.  I study spoilers for my favorite TV shows. Recently, unfortunately, I discovered the website www.moviespoiler.com.

I don’t like wandering.

Then I think back on all the decisions I’ve made, at varying points of stupidity (at worst) and ignorance (at best) in my life, and how some choices felt well-founded and some haphazard.  But none felt free of uncertainty.  I’ve wandered throughout life whether I felt lost or not, and somehow I’ve always ended up home.  Someone is pretty good at this Taking Care of Me business.