Bucket List – For August 2, 2016

After seeing the movie Bucket List, I made a short list of my own.

• First, a whale watching excursion from Seattle or Whidbey Island.
• Then a night in Dayton, WA’s historic hotel and dinner in Dayton’s 4-star French restaurant.
• Next, a trip to New England to see colorful fall leaves.
• Finally, a trip to Hawaii.

As for whale watching, I penciled in nice but not necessary. For years as a teen I watched porpoises play in the Gulf of Mexico most Sunday afternoons. That pretty much satisfies whale watching for me.

The Dayton, WA hotel and French restaurant also falls into nice but not necessary. I spent several weeks in Europe some years ago with my daughter. We ate in Paris restaurants, rode a train from London’s Paddington Station to Stratford-on- Avon, and sat on the bench where William courted Anne Hatthaway in her family’s cottage. On our return to London, a cow died on the RR tracks, causing a two hour delay waiting for large equipment that could move the cow off the tracks. That could even happen in Spokane.

My husband claims the Fall leaves in New England can’t equal the falls in NE Iowa where he’s from. A fall trip there might be in our future, but not this year. I’ve booked a late October trip for myself to Athens, GA ~ not Greece.  Daughter Allison is an aerialist with the Canopy Studio’s Fall Trapeze show.  I’ll be there just in time for Georgia’s fall display of leaves, which gave me such comfort last October. My little brother was in a Gainesville, GA hospital, northeast of Atlanta, and not far from where my daughter lives. He was dying of cancer. The vibrant leaves around my hotel reminded me every sad day that life goes on.

And Hawaii, the last item on my list, again nice but not necessary. I think of spending so many Sunday afternoons at the beach as a teen, ruining my skin with too much sun. I realize that if I do make it to Hawaii at my age, I’ll be covered up like a bee keeper.  Not much fun in that.

The only Bucket List I have now is much more local:

More summers to watch quail families in our back yard. More falls listening to geese honking overhead as they fly south. More winter drives to Coeur d’Alene with my husband to see eagles in tall trees around Wolf Bay. More springs with robins building nests in our climbing rose trellis.

It’s clear to me now that what I most want on my Bucket List is more time for things I love in my own small world, no matter how small my world seems to anyone with bigger dreams. I guess that means that I only have one thing on my bucket list now:  More time!