Bucket List

What's listed in my bucket isn't important.  What's important is that I have a bucket list.  Or, rather, that I continue to work on a bucket list, adding things, crossing things out, checking things off.  Zip-lining, check.  Snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, check.  Observing a wine valley from a hot-air balloon . . . no check yet.

We've all been victims of the belief that there is plenty of time in this life to do the things that begin as dreams.  But as many of us have sadly discovered, that's not always true.  How many of us will get to leave this existence saying, "Yep, I did everything I wanted to do!"  Well, nobody, really.  There's got to be something you didn't get to do!  How many of us will leave this plane with deep regrets?  The way things have been going, I think too many.

There's something in the middle, and that's where I want to be.  No, I didn't get to see The Doors or John Lennon.  But I have seen The Sistine Chapel and the Parthenon.  I didn't get to meet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but I rode a horse into Bryce Canyon.  I have never been to a Tupperware Party, but . . . wait, that was never on the bucket list!  And it never will be, so please do not invite me.

For twenty years, I shared a home and children with a beautiful man.  He didn't get to check off as many things on his bucket list as he would have liked, but he taught me to get out there and do stuff.  I suspect he is there with me as I travel, taking it all in with me.  At least, that's what I choose to believe.

Now about that novel I want to write . . . that's on the list, right under the hot-air balloon adventure.

I'm heading out now to check something else off.  Be back in a few days!