i.

“Right here, Anna, this one will be your room.” My dad tilted the formidable set of architectural drawings slightly to give five-year-old me a closer look at the circular room on the second floor of my family’s newly-designed house. “Someday it’ll be your princess tower,” he told me.

Sandwiched between two brothers, I was among the least girly of my elementary-school friends. Yet the thought of having my own room in a “tower” – actually a semi-circular, stone-clad architectural feature joining two wings of the house – roused the dormant princess in me. Studying the elevation drawing of my promised room, I imagined myself a modern-day Rapunzel, with long, shiny hair and a sparkling view from my very own tower window. As a kindergartner, I had two impressions of Rapunzel: 1) She had long hair, and 2) she lived in a tower. Sounded good to me. Little did I know that Rapunzel was a prisoner in that tower, and her hair was a ladder for a witch.

ii.

I was five years old in 2007. My family had moved recently from Northern Virginia into my mom’s childhood home in Massachusetts. At the time of the move, my dad left his office job to pursue his passion for building custom houses, which he had done part-time in Virginia with great success. After several years in Massachusetts, my parents found the perfect property on which to build a new home for our family.

My dad’s expertise as a builder meant that he could pour “sweat equity” into the project and create a special home for us. He designed a beautiful house, siting it to maximize views of a 12-acre salt marsh and a wide, blue ribbon of ocean in the distance. In addition to becoming our home, the house would be a significant long-term investment for my parents. That was the plan.

By the time the calendar flipped to 2008, a financial crisis was brewing in America. The stock market collapsed in September, making it impossible for my parents to prioritize construction of the new house. The partially-built structure sat in an unfinished state for an extended period of time as my family scrambled to recover from the financial devastation wrought by the market crash.

Even worse, our house made us a magnet for contempt in the neighborhood; living in proximity to a long-term construction project wore thin for certain nearby property owners. Some concern was not unreasonable. However, certain of our neighbors went to great lengths in creating what morphed into an ugly crusade against my family. A multi-years-long series of events unfolded as the situation gained momentum and took on a bizarre life of its own.

iii.

I will be leaving for college soon. We have yet to complete and move into our house. In some respects, the fairy-tale future I envisioned is much different from the reality I have lived. At times, I have felt disappointment over what “should” have been.

However, the experience has taught me useful life lessons and given me insights into human nature.

I discovered that not all schoolyard bullies grow out of it.

I saw that the pendulum of opinion tends to swing in favor of those with the biggest megaphone.

I perceived the destructive power of jealousy.

I witnessed the discipline required to take the high road – and the wisdom of navigating that path patiently.

It took a global pandemic for me to realize that my family’s ordeal taught me an even simpler truth than any of these: We are neither entitled to -- nor are we confined by -- our expectations.

Over the years, disappointment hasn’t crushed me. On the contrary, I believe that it made me a more resilient and less inhibited person. I relied on resilience as a middle school student with a learning disability. Shaking my natural inhibition helped me adopt a nothing-to-lose attitude in pursuing part-time jobs that I have loved. Confronted with the realities of life in the shadow of COVID-19, I find myself drawing on these qualities again.

As 2020 began, I felt eager anticipation about what the next 18 months had in store. A high school junior, I was looking forward to volleyball tournaments, proms, college visits, parties, and football games along with the more mundane realities of SATs, part-time work, and academics. Coronavirus took a sledgehammer to my plans.

iv.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Yet, few of us had any notion of just how drastically life was about to change. That afternoon, a hairstylist wove my nearly waist-long hair into two pigtails and cut them off. I popped the pair of foot-long braids into a manila envelope and sent them on their way – a long-planned donation to Locks of Love.

The symbolism of this haircut in light of my one-time Rapunzel aspirations hit me like a lightning bolt two weeks later.

Despite my childhood fantasies, Rapunzel’s is not the life for me. Fate kept me out of my tower, and my hair will serve as a wig for a sick child rather than a rope ladder for a crazy witch. Sounds good to me.

Likewise, in this unprecedented time, I have transformed my expectations about my final year of high school to include several new scenarios. My college search also takes into account a range of contingencies. I have found options and opportunities that never would have occurred to me had coronavirus not forced a detour. Which plans will come to fruition remain to be seen. But I’ll be ready to set my course when the time comes and will waste no energy lamenting what should have been. I trust that what should be will be.