You know the drill. Strap yourself into the cramped seat, stow your carry on luggage, and say a little prayer that the pilot will get you to your destination in one piece. Or maybe it’s just me that immediately remembers how to pray as the aircraft thunders down the runway?

As I sit suspended between my rainy, grey Vancouver life and the cold, snowy world of my childhood, I think about how to handle the inevitable discussion (assuming I land in Prince George safely) about what I plan to do with my life after my final surgery.

My chest tightens. Do I want everyone in my family to know my little secret? That I don’t have a plan. I’m not sure if they will believe it because I have ALWAYS had a plan.

As a five year old, I convinced my older sister to tie back her hair and put on my brothers clip-on tie so that she could play the role of the Dad while I donned a heart covered red apron and pretended to make us dinner on our Easy Bake stovetop. In elementary school, I frequently talked my Mom into driving me to school so that I could skip the long ride on the school bus. (This started in Grade One after I threw up all over an unsuspecting kid and then worried about a repeat performance every time I climbed the bus stairs and smelt the propane and stale lunch aroma). My dedication to planning continued into high school when I sat for hours at the wooden desk in my bedroom and made elaborate notes in my high school day-timer about how to split my time perfectly between my Chemistry, English, and History assignments. I had a precise formula to help me on my (unsuccessful) quest for a perfect 4.0 GPA and took great delight in using my yellow hi-lighter to cross items off my master list.

I didn’t know then that cancer would eventually rob me of the ability to make plans. Now, in the aftermath, the pressure to make the right decisions about how to spend the time (decades I hope) I have left on earth feels enormous. Someone should write a manual that helps control freaks like me ‘live in the moment’ without experiencing daily panic attacks (maybe THAT’S what I should do).

I recline my seat, sip the Ginger-ale on the tray table in front of me and open my worn copy of Rainer Rilke’s ‘Letters to a Young Poet’. I search for inspiration. For the twenty-fifth time, I wade through letter number four and the following passage stands out:

“…I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all this is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Maybe this weekend when my sister asks me about my plans, I will dodge the question by having a dance off with my five-year-old niece or building a snowman with my three-year-old nephew. Or, when I sit down to sip a glass of wine with my Mom and Dad, I will remind them (and myself) about the endless possibilities for the future instead of worrying that I don’t yet have an itemized itinerary for how I’m going to get there.

As the evening light streams through the tiny airplane window, I resolve to enjoy this suspension between two worlds. Between the past and the future; between the questions and the answers.