Lately, I’ve noticed that life has become rather predictable. I start my day with the same routine: wake at 5:30, make coffee, unload the dishwasher, feed the dog, assemble lunches (despite quitting this job each and every day), yell at my kids for ignoring their alarms, pull out breakfast options, make a smoothie, yell at my kids for yelling at each other, race to dress (no shower), shoo everyone into carpool, fill the dog’s water bowl, pack up my bag, get in my car and drive to Starbucks for a tea where I click on Waze and hold my breath, praying, as it loads, for a road closure or fender bender or police chase, anything that would cause me to take a different route to work and break from the tedium of my day-in, day-out slog. Because, my god, the monotony is painful.

And yet, my monotony (highly curated after years of mistakes, reinvention, and, finally, a little wisdom) is the linchpin to my sanity. If I was to unload the dishwasher after feeding the dog or making lunches, or, perhaps, not at all … the Jenga tower of my life, I’m pretty certain, would crash to the ground, never to be reassembled. When people depend on you, when you wake up every morning to news of another mass shooting or nuclear threat or natural disaster, when friends around you are dying, stability and routine are critical. Right?

And yet, this sophisticated routine of mine –keeping everyone on task and moving forward while cheerleading from the sidelines– has fostered an uncompromising need for me to control every damn thing. Arriving home after a recent trip and finding the house askew, I immediately started putting things in their place, questioning my kids about their rooms and homework, giving my husband my patented what-the-hell-happened-while-I-was-gone stare. To which my daughter responded (sing-song, like Jack in The Shining), “Sheeeee’s baaack.”

Excuse me?

I wanted to scold/punish/reason with her, make her understand that a 15-year old’s not yet fully-developed frontal lobe couldn’t possibly comprehend the fragility of the Jenga tower I was guarding. That my criticism wasn’t a personal attack, but an offensive maneuver, essential to maintaining structural integrity. That my bossiness had only her (and our family’s) best interests at heart. That I had no choice, dammit! It was a grand lecture, if I do say so myself, and yet . . . I couldn’t get it out of my mouth. A giant inward sob had, apparently, become stuck in my throat, allowing her words, instead of mine, to hang in the air.

Worse than being put in my place by two syllables was the realization that I didn’t like the she my daughter was referring to. She was a character from a movie I’d seen a million times: a middle-aged mom, masking her panic with a wide smile and a white-knuckle grip on a bottomless to-do list. She was uptight and rigid, narrow-minded, and incapable of spontaneity. Worst of all, she was bor-ing. But, inevitably (because this is a movie), a young, sassy woman in need of an attitude adjustment would show up –totally opposite, yet deep down so similar– and after lots of conflict, and a possible cat fight, the middle-aged mom would recognize that her noble efforts to keep everyone moving forward and on task had, perhaps, gotten a little out of hand. Then, having had this extraordinary epiphany, she would fly off to Bali for some soul-searching, rediscovering the best parts of herself, and enjoying a much-needed, extended vacation.

The only part of the movie that I like is the extended vacation in Bali. In my version, the alarm goes off at 5:30 and I fall into my well-worn routine, grateful for its reliability, for keeping my Jenga tower safe and sound. And every once in a while, my daughter, sassy and sometimes in need of an attitude adjustment, taps loose one of those Jenga blocks, allowing a little bit of light to shine through.