Plane Truths

I'm on a flight home from a week in Denmark and Iceland. The decision to go on this trip was impulsive. Cody and I decided on Reykjavik for a New Year's Eve destination only because of a happened-upon article about fireworks in Iceland. We discussed the logistics of the trip for a few hours and then jumped in. Booked some flights. Found some hotels. Decided to wander through Copenhagen for a few days also. This entire experience is completely unlike me. The older I get the more I crave control. The more I want to know what each day consists of down to the minute. I make lists of all kinds to manage menial chores I need to do. I obsessively check the weather to ensure that I am prepared for every possible scenario. I write out a weekly schedule on a board stuck to my refrigerator. I like seeing my life in a neatly presented list of days and times. This compulsion for control and the ability to forecast my every move is useless and unnecessary. I know this. Nonetheless, it is part of who I am. I handle the uncontrollable parts of my life by establishing a death grip on all the rest. 

I happen to be married to a guy who is the exact opposite of predictable and controlled and organized. Cody revels in freedom and a lack of a plan. It has taken nearly a decade for me to bestow even the smallest appreciation for a plan and routine in the life of Cody Prater. In a lot of ways, Cody is the reason why I am getting to gaze at a setting sun 30,000 feet above an snow-covered Greenland right now. He is the reason I agreed to venture to the frozen tundra rather than the familiar warm beach. He is the reason I have spent hours walking the streets of Copenhagen and getting lost in mood lighting and vodka. He is the guy who tried (unsuccessfully) to teach me how to drive a standard engine car late at night in a parking lot in Reykjavik. He brought me to a road side in Iceland beneath the Northern Lights. He allowed me this brief window of a plan-less existence that took us to the middle of Iceland without a human to be found and winds that literally almost blew our car off of an icy road on our way to parts of this world that I thought were only in movies. He somehow always finds a way to be the support I need to do things that are not naturally hardwired for me to do. And it is days that take me 30,000 feet above the earth on a plane chasing the setting sun when I appreciate this guy a little more than the days planned out on my refrigerator door.