Randomness is so freaking, well, random.
To counter its occurrence, I instill a defense known as routine. Routine requires preparation. Preparation reduces random events from altering my day. I convince myself this to be a truth. Truths comfort and reassure me. I’m simple like that.
This day, like most, I begin with routine. My wife, Janet, and I sit on the couch and sip hot black coffee in the predawn hours, as the sky slowly turns orange and red with the rising sun. We do this almost every morning. By 8am I’m prepared to workout at the gym, shower, and continue on to my office. This is my morning routine. It’s almost ritualistic. Randomness be damned.
10 minutes into my workout I receive a text. I usually disregard random text messages until I’m sitting in the sauna after the workout. However, this text tone belongs to my son, Cole. He is not an avid early morning communicator. Unease sets in due to this randomness. Deciding to read it now without my glasses, I squint and strain my eyes.
I feel a certain sense of trepidation.
I received a random call from Cole his senior year of high school on prom night. Some emotions and feelings ran high and by the early morning hours I picked him up from a random school parking lot. For some reason that stupid night sticks in my mind. It shouldn’t because it was such an uncharacteristic, loopy, out of the blue event. Wildly random, you might say.
Sitting on the abdominal crunch machine, I read Cole’s text. All good news. He shares his acceptance into a summer internship program with the American Bankers Association in Washington, DC. He’s pumped at the opportunity to work in economic research. I’m thrilled he will spend the summer working in a field directly related to his academic studies. I’m also elated to receive random good news.
Knowing things can happen in pairs, I ready myself for randomness to rain down more positivity.
I happily finish my exercise routine and head to the sauna. After 30 minutes in the 180 degree heat, a puddle of sweat pools between my feet on the wooden slats. I gather my shoes and step toward the sauna’s exit. As I reach the door, my phone begins to ring.
I glance down to see that my daughter is FaceTiming me. Unlike Cole, Anna is a morning communicator. I press answer, excited for more good news from my kids. Instead of her usual smiling, happy face, I see a distressed, teary-eyed daughter. Instantaneously, I feel randomness kick me in the gut.
Anna is not a frivolous crier.
I saw her cry after she launched her sled off of a retaining wall, breaking her arm. I saw her cry after her cousin died in a car accident. I saw her cry after her relationship with her first boyfriend ended. I saw her cry tears of joy when she and high school teammates won the volleyball state championship.
These are not happy tears rolling down her cheeks. I secretly hope it’s related to some silly, emotionally charged, inane topic that I can quickly dismiss. However, I know right away that this is serious. Even a semi-clueless father like me can pick up on the obvious signs.
Choking through tears, she tells me how she landed on a teammate’s foot at the end of volleyball practice. She says her left knee collapsed inward, resulting with a painful fall to the court. She says she can walk on it, but the knee is already swelling. The trainers and the team doctor fear it’s an ACL injury. They take her immediately to get an MRI. For the next several hours we all hold our collective breaths.
Not knowing is the worst.
Whoever says ignorance is bliss should be pistol whipped. Not knowing is maddening. Waiting is maddening. Thinking about how an inch or two can make such a dramatic impact is maddening. Randomness is maddening.
Volleyball players jump a gazillion times in their careers and almost never does it result in significant knee injuries. Players land next to each other’s feet all of the time, in practices and in games. This is a rare occurrence. This should not have happened. She just transferred here 6 weeks ago. It’s hard to fathom the randomness of the news.
By now I sit in my office, trying to distract myself with work. My efforts are largely unsuccessful. My wife, Janet, works from home, but starts pacing the house, worrying about her baby girl. We share the bad news with Cole, but nobody else. After enough anxiety builds, Janet decides to make a random run to a grocery store.
While sitting at a traffic light, Janet catches movement in her peripheral vision. She glances over to see a redhead wildly waiving her arms. It is Anna’s best friend, Gabrielle. Janet tells Gabrielle to follow her to the grocery store. Once they’re at the store, Janet unloads the bad news.
I believe Janet needed to share the news with somebody. She needed to vent, to hug, and shed a tear or two. Gabrielle, being Anna’s best friend, really couldn’t have been a better choice. It couldn’t have happened at a better time. And they couldn’t have met in a better place. It turns out the store sells chocolate covered almonds. Chocolate is the gold-standard stress reliever for my wife.
Funny thing, Gabrielle should have been at college in North Carolina.
However, she decided to sit out the spring semester and transfer schools in the fall. While in academic limbo, she received a random jury duty notification. Today, she appeared at the county courthouse to fulfill her random civic service. She was randomly dismissed this afternoon. Gabrielle randomly drove to the same traffic light as my wife. And she randomly spotted Janet in the car next to hers.
I want to dismiss sad news and disappointment as random acts of bad luck. When considering how absolutely random it is for Janet and Gabrielle to end up at the same location, on this particular day, at the same time, makes me say that absolutely nothing is actually random. It innately feels like an organized plan. No doubt, a plan more intricate and involved than this feeble minded father can comprehend. But that’s ok. I’ll rely on faith.
Later this night my daughter hosts a college volleyball transfer recruit. By this point, Anna received the MRI results. The injury will require surgical repair. Not what we wanted to hear, but the medical and training staff at the University of Iowa went above and beyond. The recruit is amazed how quickly and efficiently Iowa handles Anna’s injury. The recruit says that would have never happened at her current university. The recruit commits to Iowa the next day.
How random.
Or planned.