Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Moms

Robert Burns said, “The best-laid plans of mice and men can still go wrong.” His quote stems from a poem about a farmer feeling guilty for plowing his field and destroying the labored nest of a small mouse. I can relate.

At various points, whether being the skilled farmer or the small mouse, I had a best-laid plan.

I was going to go to college, get married, have 3 curly-haired boys two years apart, work as a local news meteorologist, and live in Montana with my rancher family. And yes, this is pre-Kevin Costner’s Yellowstone, thank you very much. I mean, it could happen, right?

Now, I did go to college (I am the farmer plowing through life, check!) and I did get married (the little mouse building her nest, check!), but it was a wretched nightmare (insert sharp-toothed plow cutting through the field, the mouse, the nest and the farmer… no check). Suddenly, 10 years older, starting over, my best-laid plans had gone terribly wrong.

How had my nest of televised local weather forecaster wearing a smart, tailored sheathe dress turned into a school teacher conducting weather experiments in khaki pants and a cardigan set? By now, the curly-haired boys had been birthed by someone else out there in the world, and once again, my nest had been tilled back into the ground.

Suddenly, 10 years older, married again with a straight-haired little girl of my own, I look at the heavily-cultivated field that is my life and think that maybe a best-laid plan going wrong actually produces quite a harvest and that a nest getting wrecked was because my best-laid plan was not, well, the best. After writing this, it seems so ridiculous to even have had that plan.

Perhaps, the only real piece of it was a journey to Montana. I can see my family holding their cell phones, waiting for me to report the latest conditions in big sky country and uploading it to social media. That would be at least one nest left intact. It could happen, right?