This week I did something frightening. Something new. Something I can’t remember doing for a very long time. I made plans.

And not the ‘what-are-we-having-for-dinner’ kind of plans, or the ‘we-can-stand-outside-in-a-group-now’ plans, but actual, concrete, ‘big-events-in-the-future’ plans.

For a while now we’ve been dithering about booking flights to the UK. Being fully vaccinated, we were hoping to avoid yet another period of time when we would be locked in a house with a toddler. But, alas, it wasn’t to be. So we have signed up for another tiny house arrest with a tiny person and accepted that it’s worth it for the plans we’ll be able to make.

Been a while since my lists were anything but work related…

I’m hosting an event to celebrate the end of my community writing project. I’m going to the wedding of a friend I’ve known for almost fifteen years. I’ll see my entire family at our summer barbecue. It’s as though, having not done anything much of note for over a year, everything is cascading all at once.

Among the excitement is the insecurity of not having done this for a while. There are outfits to be planned, gifts to be bought, the creaking gears of my social interaction skills need to be oiled. Perhaps I can converse with the rain, just to get some practice in.

And then there’s the physicality of it. Taking this oh-so-sedentary body onto trains and buses, metal contraptions that take me under the ground and into the air. Squeezing the things I might possibly need in the next month into suitcases along with clanking presents (wine and cornichons, obviously).

The suitcases are a little dusty…

I’m giddy with it. We don’t leave for almost two weeks and I’ve already started making lists. Picturing myself in this T-shirt and these jeans that have been visible to no-one but my computer screen and the two lovely bodies that share my home. In a group. In a hug. Close to the wonderful sisters I haven’t seen for a year.

It’s hard to stay in the moment, to keep to the structure of the day when I want to be flying into the sky. To think about what to cook for dinner when I wonder what cake there’ll be at the coffee shop I go to with the friend I haven’t seen for so long.

Mindfulness and mediation are important, keeping us rooted in the moment and thankful for what is here. But I’m already away. Let me wander around in the promise of plans for a little longer, please. It’s been so long.

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