The Five Year Plan

A lot can happen in five years. Life is unpredictable, and even the best of plans can get derailed.

I suppose people make five year plans all the time. They graduate from college, start a career, get married, buy a house, and have two children (a boy and a girl) approximately two years apart. These children arrive at exactly the right socio-economic time in the family’s perfectly planned life. After that, I suppose a new five to ten year plan is born.

The thing is, our five year plans never seem to work out. Five years ago, I was pregnant with Benjy, Chris was in his last semester of law school with a job waiting for him in the fall, and all that stood between me and my dream of being a stay-at-home mom/wife of a wealthy attorney/ “lady who lunches” was the Illinois Bar Exam. Chris passed that bar exam and started his new life as an associate at a prestigious law firm, except I soon realized his paycheck wouldn’t go as far as I’d planned, especially when the student loan payments came due.  It’s okay, really. I wouldn’t have made a very good “lady who lunches” anyway. Designer labels aren’t really my thing either. The plan was doomed from the start. Too predictable.

Five years before that, I was a senior in college making plans to head off to law school when I met and fell madly in love with Chris. I knew from then on that any future I had would inevitably have to be intertwined with his. He lived in Georgia; I lived in North Carolina. I ditched my plans, took a job as a reporter, and moved myself closer to my man. We were married a year later, and Jacob surprised us shortly thereafter. I love surprises.

If I remember correctly, five years before that I was dreaming of becoming a magazine editor in New York City. And five years before that, I wanted to be a missionary in Africa, which is really ironic because my current life plan with Chris’s job with the State Department is to avoid Africa. Don’t worry people who love Africa. In another five years, I just might change my mind.

All those plans, and where am I now? I’m a stay-at-home mom in Tijuana, Mexico, living my dream in a most unpredictable place. So why all this nostalgia?

As most of you know, Chris was recently “awarded” a position in Kabul, Afghanistan starting in January of 2013. One of the perks of working in this dangerous and difficult location is that he gets to bid for his follow-on tour before the positions are technically even available. Basically, he gets first pick at the coveted places in the world, provided that the timing works out for training and the position's availability. Typically, an officer would use this “golden ticket” as an opportunity to go to Western Europe, i.e. London, Paris, Rome, Bern, etc.

For the past two weeks, all we’ve talked about is where we want to go in 2014 to spend three years, which basically means we’ve been planning out the next five years of our life. Quite frankly, it’s overwhelming. Not only do I have to think about important things like how the weather will affect my hair, but I also have to consider the quality of the schools for educating a middle schooler. Because when we leave that mystery post in 2017, Jacob will be in seventh grade. And when I think about Jacob being in the seventh grade, I just feel tired.

Of course, as I start planning out the location of the next five years of our life, I inevitably start trying to plan what I will do with myself for those five years, aside from raising the most remarkable little men in the history of mankind.

As most foreign service/military spouses know, a career is a tricky thing when your beloved moves you around the globe every couple of years. Somewhere in all those five year plans, I’d always planned to go back to school when my boys got older. Now I can’t help but try to figure out if and when that will ever happen. And if it could be worked out timing wise, would it even be worth it? I don’t exactly want to spend thousands of dollars educating myself to work a dead end EFM job. (For those not fluent in governmentese, EFM stands for eligible family member.  EFMs get priority on some jobs within an embassy/consulate.  Many of these jobs are far from glamorous.) I also have mixed feelings about the government controlling any more of my life. Our benevolent Uncle Sam already decides where my husband will work, where I will live and with whom I will socialize. I’m not sure I want him being my boss too.

And so it is that I’m having the third (or is it fourth?) “midlife crisis” of Chris’s two year foreign service career. I’m too young for this mess.

Clearly, the only logical solution is to have another baby and delay this decision another five years. I just can’t seem to figure out when to schedule one.  Plus, eventually, I might get tired of having babies.

Alternatively, I could just follow Jacob's five year plan.  

I'll just need to focus on finding a swimsuit that won't ride up my butt when I go down that water slide.  Shoot.  I think that's impossible.

Back to the ol' drawing board...