The Bucket List

During the Covid quarantine, time at home, stay-away-from-most-other-people, whatever you want to call it, I have become a little obsessed with the idea of a bucket list.  Someday, there will come a time when I once again have the freedom to move around, have a partner to travel with, and have more money in my bank account.  While a couple of those might be far off dreams, I am really hoping that the first one is attainable, and I choose not to give up hope on the last two quite yet.  So while I stand still and try not to breathe while time moves past me, I create dreams in my head and a bucket list of places to see, and things to do, when life again begins to move.  

Today while looking for something completely unrelated on Amazon (oh, Amazon, how I both love and loathe you), I came across a book that both excited and slightly depressed me.  It was titled “Our Bucket List Journal, An Inspirational Journal for Couples to Create New Adventures.”  Okay, #newrelationshipgoals, I thought.  Perhaps that should go in my dating profile someday.  “Half-baked middle school teacher seeks partner (male), to do life with her and her three crazy boys (ages 4, 8 and 14).  Must be emotionally mature, financially stable, and ready to go on adventures during the teacher off-season.”  

Getting to peek inside some of the sample pages as I looked at the journal, I saw that the authors had actually created a very long list of suggestions.  The first one suggested that as a couple, people could “swim with dolphins or sharks.”  I am all for swimming with dolphins.  In fact, it actually is on my personal bucket list.  However, I didn’t even know that swimming with sharks was a thing!  Number four suggests adding a lock to the love lock bridge in Paris.  It’s a nice idea, a bit cliche, but if I happened to be in Paris with a special someone, I don’t think I would say no to this one.  I don’t need to go ocean fishing, skydiving, stay in an overwater bungalow (oh wait, is that like Fiji...yeah, I want to do that), or ride in a hot air balloon.  That’s just a few from numbers 1-13.  

Let’s keep going.  Honestly, this list is all I would need on a first date to get a really good idea of what a potential partner is like.  “Um, excuse me, could we just talk about this list first, then I’ll know if you should spend your money buying me dinner.  So, do YOU want to rent a glass igloo?”  To be fair, as ridiculous as it sounds, this option does include seeing the Northern Lights while in said igloo, so I do want to do that.  Perhaps there is a way to see the Northern Lights without freezing every part of myself inside a glass house.  And if the potential “he” were to throw me a line about “creating our own heat” while there, there would be NO second chances.   

Not too much further down the list, ideas get a little better.  I would love to go to Disneyland, with or without my children, Mommy guilt aside.  I would like to go on a road trip of some kind, and I love watching meteor showers.  I remember a couple summers at summer camp, hauling our bunk mattresses out into the open field on an August evening and watching the stars fly across the sky.  As I sit and remember it, my pulse actually slows and I feel light and love enter into my spirit. This is the perfect experience to share with people I love.   

Further on, the somewhat unimpressive list thus far recommends seeing a Broadway play together.  I love musicals.  I most definitely would be in the market for a man who could enjoy going with me to a musical now and then.  Better yet, fly this girl to New York to see one for realsies.  On the other hand, masquerade balls are overrated, I don’t need to see every famous landmark in our state, and since I was born here I’ve probably already seen most of them.  I don’t need to have a baby, I’ve had three, and when it is suggested that a bucket list item could be to “dive in a submarine and see the Titanic,” I’m left wondering A) is that REALLY a thing? and B) hello claustrophobic nightmare!  I barely survived Nemo’s submarine voyage at Disneyland.  Is this list going to get any better?  But I am oddly curious, so I keep reading.  

I don’t have any desire to float in the Dead Sea, but I wouldn’t mind watching someone else do it, or just seeing the Dead Sea itself.  If I ever felt it were safe enough, I would like to travel to the Holy Lands.  I think visiting Hawaii would be magical, I would love to explore castles in Europe, and making a wish in the Trevi Fountain would be a dream come true.   I’d like to see the Grand Canyon, The Great Barrier Reef, Swim in the Atlantic Ocean (again), and see the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center.  

The end of the list is both full of easy add-ons for me, and a little bit interesting.  Going camping is an easy yes.  This activity is extremely accessible in the lovely Pacific Northwest.  It is suggested that a couple could put a couple’s day spa excursion on their list, host a couple’s game night, and, um, “have sex outside.”  As long as the couples from game night are not included in the having sex outside, I could be up for it.  Can you find a place in the middle of nowhere, imaginary would-be-partner, because that is the ONLY way this could happen.  The list concludes by suggesting that it would be good to make rock climbing, and building an orphanage or school together (Habitat for Humanity house counts right?) good bucket list items.  I’ve actually already done both, so I’d be up to do them again.  Interestingly enough, sandwiched between these two items it makes mention one of the best bucket list items any couple can wish for. “Orgasm (for real) at the same time.”  Excuse me while my puritanical tendencies make my eyes bulge out of my head!  But in all seriousness, it’s not a bad suggestion, so to this last one I’ll just say a resounding “yes, yes, and yes!”  Yup, #majorrelationshipgoals.  

Bucket lists are awesome. They help me look forward to the future.  They help me keep hope alive.  They help me to feel that just around the next bend there is something better to look forward to.  Even if “the better” isn’t around the next curve in life, it may be around the bend in the road that follows that one.  It isn’t that I want to be making to-do-lists forever, but when life is in a holding pattern, whether it be from Covid, from a change in a relationship, a period of mourning, or something else that seems to consume our ability to move forward somehow, it is always good to remember the moments we live for.  Maybe it is the moment I had this evening playing tickle with my four-year-old, where I got to kiss his belly and hear him squeal.  Maybe it is the moment where I irritated my 14-year-old by stealing a piece of his Halloween candy, then ran away saying, “love you too!”  Maybe it is in dreaming of the day life looks a lot different for the better, and making lists of my hopes and dreams.  All these moments, the ones I live now and the ones I hope for later, keep me moving forward, while I stand still, as time moves on.