One of my best and worst qualities is my ability to daydream. It’s apparently so obvious to others that when we took a personality test at work, a line under Ways Not to Communicate with Laura reads: “Do not dream with her or you’ll lose time.” Noted. 

For better or worse, I’ve always built bridges to imaginary worlds, my lived reality on one side and a completely different one on the other.

It’s a trait that came in handy when my sisters and I played Barbies growing up. 

I remember one Barbie-filled summer in the little blue house that we painted ourselves, for which we were paid something like a quarter per hour in the hot Iowa sun. That summer, we were finally old enough to be left alone for a few hours.

We loved our newfound freedom, ignoring the chore list left for us until exactly 17 minutes before our Mom came home. In the hours between when her car rolled down the driveway and our Olympic chore relay, we’d watch The Price is Right and Days of our Lives. We loved Plinko and Alison Sweeney in equal measure. We would watch the hourglass spin just before Days came on, and could imitate the exact way Bob Barker said “Come on down!” We loved how the lucky winner would scream and throw up their hands. We secretly imagined how we might react should Bob’s card hold our name. We didn’t know how to get to California, much less appear on The Price is Right, but we would be ready nonetheless. 

The drama we watched on TV would play out on our Barbie set, complete with furniture we built with hot glue, fabric, styrofoam, and cardboard. Our plot lines were much simpler than Days, of course. We didn’t reenact much beyond falling in love, getting married, and having babies. We didn’t know yet about all the other ways to be a woman in the world, but that would come later.

In addition to Barbies and Bob Barker, we took a fair amount of road trips growing up. I would faithfully pack all of my belongings, and then jump in the van. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t drive, or that those who could were still busy checking faucets and thermostats. I was ready to go.

My mom would often find me sitting in the car surrounded by my blankets and books, my old quilted bunny nearby. This was in the days when we had one Discman and later, one Game Boy between the three of us. Road tripping wasn’t glamorous. You couldn’t even make it through an entire CD before having to pass it off to your sister, but it sure beat hard labor under the hot Iowa sun.

 “You know we’re at least an hour from leaving,” my mom would say. Our van hadn’t left the driveway, but in my mind, I had already reached our destination. 

These imaginary bridges have taken me far. The thought of walking across the graduation stage propelled me through many late nights in grad school. Envisioning myself in retirement keeps me saving even when it feels light-years away. 

When I think about it long enough, I can see how much of my life has been lived in anticipation of an assumed conclusion. And it’s worked out okay so far. 

That is, until Mike walked into the kitchen one night to find me standing at the counter, eating potato chips from the bag while rewatching Scandal, a soap opera for more modern times. 

The worst part? I don’t even like potato chips. They are the last thing I reach for at a barbeque. In fact, if potato chips were to vanish in a snack rapture, leaving only fig newtons behind, I wouldn’t shed a tear, much less bat an eye.

And now, a tangent about potato chips. When I studied abroad in Ecuador, I lived with a family whose daughter was very high up in PepsiCo, the parent company of Lays chips. And if you should know one thing about Ecuadorians beyond their kindness and hospitality, it’s this: Ecuadorians, or at least, the people I encountered, love their chips. 

We would show up at family gatherings, and there would be a smorgasbord of every type of Lays imaginable, including limited edition flavors that were barely on the market.

I had no desire to try each and every chip, though had Mike been in my life and in the room at that time, I’m sure he would’ve been delighted. He’s the kind of person who reaches for potato chips first at a barbeque. But I digress. 

Back to my kitchen, and the counter on which I was leaning as I grabbed handfuls of greasy chips from the bag I didn’t remember buying. In that instant, Mike knew we’d reached DEFCON. 

Among the many signals Mike interprets to read my moods, he can rely on two tried and true indications that something is off: 1). I suddenly believe I need to completely recreate my life a la Alison Sweeney in Days or 2). He finds me standing at the counter late at night, eating something I do not even like, trashy TV on repeat. 

After forcibly removing my hand from the chip bag and shoving it back into the cabinet, I thought about January and realized, it’s a miracle I surrendered to the latter. 

The whole month was chaotic, beginning with the return to school after a long winter break.

Hugs from friends made elementary school reentry feel like a reunion. But junior high is hard and the transition was less than kind. 

There was also Mike’s dad’s heavenly birthday, which always brings about a resurgence of grief, a reminder of his parents passing six months to the day of each other.

We adults returned to work full steam ahead, serving clients (me) and kiddos (Mike). Some of us returned home covered with bite marks.

The kids’ activities and our volunteer roles resumed; the slow pace of Christmas break was quickly abandoned.

And the news, it kept coming, each headline more disheartening than the last. While families were separated and communities brought to the brink, it was all we could do to keep watch, to stay alert during the long night. 

It dawned on me, in this running to and fro, with the country in a tizzy, I could no longer find comfort in my imaginary worlds. It felt harder to rest in what could be, when all around me lay uncertainty. 

At some point in January between the headlines and heartache, between work and laundry and life, I started to wonder, “What if things don’t work out?”

As a parent this question feels especially fraught. I no longer know, nor can I control, what my kids will encounter after my car rolls down the driveway, though I am blessed to get midday texts from Mike with insight into his days. Case in point:  Mike once texted me from school asking which item beginning with the letter “p” was all over his clothes. While I thought of every p-named bodily function, it turned out to be pulled pork.

To combat my fears I try to make my home a safe haven. If my house is clean and calm, I reason, my kids will always have a soft place to land. That thought works until I’m met with a familiar weekly phenomenon: the dreaded Thursday House.

Thursday House is an adaptive state wherein our attempts to line up shoes and run the dishwasher and eat at the table implode around us as the week goes on. 

We begin with the best of intentions, but by a few days in, there are piles of laundry everywhere. Our food looks like it’s been raided by a band of starving locusts, or really, just two kids that eat more than I do. The only thing scarier than Thursday House is Friday Fridge. 

As the news of the world became more shocking this January, the flu hit our house. Not all at once, of course, but spread out over multiple weeks, requiring us to juggle our work schedules and sanitize again and again. 

At bedtime one night, when life felt extra heavy, Mike and I found ourselves kneeling in prayer position on opposite sides of our king-size bed. Why we chose that suppliant stance, who can say, though maybe it was the giant pile of laundry on our bed that kept us there. 

Thursday House, I tell you. 

From our awkward position, we chatted about our days, the kids peeking in, asking to join every two minutes. Just five more minutes, we would tell them, our conversations about the world too adult for their little ears.

When finally, we let them in, our eldest hurled himself onto the bed, pushing aside laundry to tuck himself under the covers.

Junior high boys do not usually belong on my side of the bed, though at least he was somewhat clean.

And then Margaret joined too, launching herself up on top of the covers and clothing, the caboose on our runaway train. We went around and talked about what we were thankful for. Because in the absence of certainty there can still be gratitude. 

Mike and I each named the other, both of us recognizing that when you’re in the thick of it, surrounded by piles of laundry, it’s good to have a trusty co-pilot by your side.

The kids rolled their eyes at that, the same way they roll their eyes during dinner, when I make them they tell me their highs, mediums, and lows, and of course what they’re thankful for, too.

Graydon says he’s thankful for food nine times out of ten. It’s recency bias, I think. And Margaret, as a cop-out, or perhaps in earnest, says, “I’m thankful for me.”  

Both kids have a point. In the midst of a heavy month, perhaps we can be thankful for the bodies that carry us and the food that fills our locust bellies. 

Gratitude helps, but so too does sitting with the unknown. 

What began as a fistful of potato chips that fateful night has since shifted to gentle curiosity. I’m now giving myself permission to ask, “What if things don’t work out?” 

How privileged I was to have never asked the question, or worse, never feared the answer. 

It’s embarrassing really, how much I’ve been able to approach the future with reasonable certainty. I leave the house knowing I’ll be able to return and experience Friday Fridge as only a temporary inconvenience. 

I’ve been comforted by the knowledge that things will land in my favor. I’ve trusted, too, that my efforts can outpace any bad luck. 

I still have all the faith I’ve always had, but it no longer feels easy—or right—to build paths to an imagined future. When things feel wobbly, I’m trying to pause before crossing the bridge, accepting that the other side hasn’t yet revealed itself. 

I can no longer conjure up a new reality, so I’m forced to make do with what’s right in front of me. It’s what people in marginalized spaces have done for decades: creating pockets of joy in the face of tremendous uncertainty, building a home—and community—by intentional design. 

As the news broke out of Minneapolis, I couldn’t help but think of all of the parents making mac and cheese and caring for sick kids and grappling with their own Thursday Houses. In the most uncertain of times, they were forced to carry on. 

I suppose we all do that, in a way. When you don’t have a Barbie dream house, you build what you can with styrofoam and hot glue. When you don’t like your storyline, you stay in character, waiting to see what happens next. 

We can’t always choose the world our kids leave home to face, or rewrite recent history. But we can do our best to make our homes and communities safe havens. We can choose to care for our neighbors.  Because no matter our differences, we’re all grieving some days and celebrating others and I think we can all agree that junior high is rough.

We know not what each day will hold, but we can send our loved ones—and ourselves—out into the world with the most strength that we can muster.

At the end of the day, having braved the hot Iowa sun or a weary vigil, we will welcome our loved ones with open arms, allowing them to flop down on piles of laundry. And if they look around at the mess and wonder if everything is going to be okay, we can shrug and say, “Thursday House.”