Bucket List Musings

No, no, it’s not Saturday.

I know that this post is totally out of whack –normally the crow squawks only on the weekend. And lately, she has grown silent, anyway, so why post this in the middle of the week, and why post at all?

So I’ll explain: it’s my birthday today, and I get to do whatever I want. I sent the RS off to his normal Tuesday activity, the woodcarving group,  even though he offered to stay home and help me celebrate. He started my day right by bringing in the first rose of summer, and I know there's several bottles of wine to choose from when Happy Hour arrives, and then there's tickets to a concert with Murray MacLaughlan, so that's all good. But first, I need some alone time.

He’s perhaps a little hurt that I would choose alone time rather than together time. But I need this morning to sort out a bit of life and to look ahead at the coming year. Besides, we’ve had a lot of together time lately. So thanks, sweetie, for indulging me.

I’m using you, my readers, all 14 of you, in place of my journal today. The inner crow seems to need to do this, and mine is not to question why.

A year from now, I’ll be 70. (“The Lord willing,” I hear my parents whisper in my ear. Never assume anything.) Oh. My! How did that happen? Yes, I know, a day at a time, a year at a time.

Chin hairs, gray hairs, wrinkly skin and all: that's me at 69.

When people mark special days such as this, it’s not uncommon for their thoughts to turn to the things they hope to do yet in the time that is left to them – a bucket list of sorts. The RS and I have created bucket lists from time to time, and whenever we revisit the list, we realize that the dreams that were in the bucket five years ago are no longer dreams we care to pursue. In fact, the bucket list is growing shorter, not because we’ve given up on living a full life, but because we’ve changed, our hopes and dreams have changed, and, I think, we’re appreciating more and more the life we have in the here and now. Where you are, that’s where you’re supposed to be. Appreciate each moment for what it is.

Still, there are a few things left to do. When my dad was in his 70s, he decided it was time to write the story of his life. This was on his bucket list. This is not unusual in our family, by the way. I have manuscripts of various ancestors on my history bookshelf. They are amazing treasures to help me understand who I am and where I came from.

Dad was ever a quester, trying to figure things out, and since his handwriting was nearly indecipherable, he began writing his autobiography using a typewriter. However, when he saw what a computer could do, he was excited. (“look at that, you can cut and paste right on the screen, not with a scissors and scotch tape!”) This was in the dinosaur days of the computer, on a Commodore 64! He set up a table in the guest room, and every day he entered his sanctuary and worked on his labour of love using a painfully slow  hunt-and-peck method to record his memories, beginning with the family history stretching back into the 1800s. There followed the story of his own birth family,  the story of my mom’s family, his memories of the war, their courtship and marriage, and everything that happened after that – children, immigration, community involvement, aging, travels and more.

Dad moved on to an early version of the Windows computer and learned that system (but never learned to type faster!). He only stopped when his vision narrowed to almost nothing because of macular degeneration, in his early 80s. By that time, he had caught up with his life story, but he often said to me, years later, “The story isn’t finished yet. If I wasn’t blind, I would add more.” And I would say, “Don’t worry dad, I will finish it for you.” Thirteen years later, that is still on MY bucket list.

I’ve been thinking how best to do this, and of course, as an oldest eager-to-please child, feeling guilty that I have not fulfilled my promise. Recently, however, I had an aha moment when I realized that if I write my story, I will have finished Dad’s earthly story, too. And telling my story has been in my personal bucket for a number of years. Each time, I think I’ll start, and each time something doesn’t work out for me. Perhaps I wasn’t ready yet.

But if not now, then when? And if now, then  how, and what? I love writing, and I think I could happily spend hours in front of the computer screen, but I also love art, and my family, and friendships, and CrowDayOne, and other wonderful things that make life rich. It’s a wonderful dilemma, isn’t it? So that’s why I needed this morning, to look ahead at the next year and sketch out an idea of how writing and quilting a memoir might happen in the middle of living the life I have. One thing I know, it will have to include quilting too.

Writing all this down and sharing it with you, for some reason, generates creative thoughts, which I hope to put into practice in the next year.

What needs to happen now is this: I need to begin. Stay tuned, and wish me blessings on the endeavor.