Monthly Archives: July 2014

The Empty Your Bucket List

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Bucket List: (n) – A number of experiences or achievements that a person hopes to have or accomplish during their lifetime.

I love lists.  They can be found anywhere (my car, the kitchen counter, the pool bag) and written on anything (a Post-it, a WaWa receipt, my hand).  I also love goals: Run a half-marathon, submit an essay for publication, do the Facebook 30 Day Ab Challenge.

So, when I started a Summer Bucket List a few weeks ago, I went after it like a true pathological goal-setting list-maker. The longer I spent writing it, the more charged up I became.  Each “task” added to the list was bigger and loftier than the last.  Essentially what I ended up with was a list of goals.

Lofty goals = Heavy Bucket.

Reading the list made me feel tired.  And I hadn’t even done anything yet.  Which of course made me feel like a loser.  Maybe I just needed to buckle down and get this shit done.

Then I had an a-ha moment.

Phil and I joined a pool this summer, and headed over there one late afternoon with the kids.  It’s a nice pool, nothing fancy – which is a good thing because we are also not fancy. Especially Phil, who believes “shorts” is synonymous with “bathing suit,” and needs to be reminded that in fact they are two separate clothing items made of different material.

But I digress.

So we are sitting by the semi-deserted pool, drinking wine on ice out of plastic solo cups, watching Emma go off the diving board while Phoebe back-floats like an old man in pink water wings.  A random guy with a guitar set up a little stage at the corner of the pool, singing the great hits of the 70’s.

And then, with Styx playing in the background, there was this moment that felt suspended in time.  Phil felt it too.  We looked at each other with tears in our eyes, and I said: “This is so…”

“….easy.” he finished.

Moving three times in 18 months with two kids under the age of eight requires a tremendous amount of frenetic energy.  You are constantly focused on where you are going or where you have been or where you might end up, rather than where you actually are.  It’s hard.  But without even noticing, you get kind of addicted to the hard.  You expect everything to be hard.  If you are not working hard, it means you are not doing it right, or not doing the right thing.

The summer is not the time for hard.  This realization has been hitting me slowly over the past few weeks – that I create difficulty where there isn’t any, because “hard” has become my weird, masochistic comfort zone.  I am programmed to rush: rush to make dinner, rush to wash the sheets, rush to give the girls showers.  When really….what’s the rush?  It’s not like the dirty sheets are going to run away.

Since that evening at the pool, I have started to notice how much I potentially miss by always having an agenda – by feeling the need to accomplish or achieve or be productive. I have tried to slow down and notice little things, like the woodpecker outside my window every morning as I drink coffee, or the ladybug trying to find her way out of the bathtub. Instead of rushing, I try to do more watching.  And man, there is some great stuff to watch:

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I went back to the Bucket List and started over, renaming it “Empty Your Bucket.” Instead of “what do I want to achieve or accomplish,” I asked, “What will make me feel more alive, more relaxed, more joyful?”

So for the rest of the summer, I will be working on “experiencing” my list.  Maybe I will blog about it, maybe I won’t. Maybe I will post next week, maybe I won’t post until August. It feels weird to be so noncommittal.  But in the spirit of Emptying My Bucket, I am just going to let things be…light.

The intention of the new list is to feel more like this:

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This is my favorite photo of me.  I look so free, so unencumbered.  So alive.  I know that little girl is still in there.

Maybe this list will help me find her again.

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Jessie’s Empty Your Bucket List

  1. Buy basil plant + tomato plant = Make Sauce
  2. Go Paddleboarding
  3. Read a book in a hammock
  4. See a movie under the stars
  5. Dive off a diving board
  6. Tie Dye Party
  7. Nightswimming
  8. Swim in a waterfall
  9. Outdoor music
  10. Get muddy
  11. Collect something
  12. Watch the clouds
  13. Screen-less Sunday(s)
  14. Play tennis
  15. Learn the Running Man (and get it on video)

What’s on your Empty Your Bucket List?

 

 

 

 

 

This Was 36

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In the past year on The Huffington Post, there have been a number of posts  by writers I admire encapsulating what their current age “is” to them:  Lindsey Mead with This Is 38, Emily Mendell, This Is 45, and Allison Tate, This is 39. These lovely pieces made me laugh, cry, but most of all….reflect.

Thursday is my 37th birthday.

I feel a lot of resistance to writing about 36. I am not one to look back or dwell on what was.  I am the client who says to the therapist, “Oh do we really need to get into all of that?”

I’d rather look to the future – to all the possibilities that lie ahead.  I think this is because I don’t like to be sad.  Because when I get sad, I get REALLY SAD.  And I am scared that if I go down that hole, I will never claw my way out.

But as I sit here right now, straddling two ages….I can’t help but think you need to reflect upon where you have been in order to know where you want to go. See? I’m more mature already!  And it’s not even Thursday yet.

This is me on my 36th birthday.  It was taken at a beach party in Scituate that was actually for the 4th of July, but I pretended was just for me.  It was a magical evening.  I look really happy because I was.  I felt 100% alive.   IMG_2392

For me, 36 was about my family: Phil, Emma, and Phoebe, and until January, our dog Ellie. This is the family I co-created, and before this year I am not sure I really grasped the hugeness of that – the beauty and joy and bring-you-to-your-knees challenges of having your own independently run familial operation.  Which is what we became when we moved from Philly to Scituate, MA, a town where we knew not a soul.

36 was “just us.”  A kamikaze trust mission. 36 was not running away from an argument because you are 30 minutes from the nearest Target and you forget where it is, exactly.

36 was realizing that sometimes you need to be the strong one.  36 was being the glue, the one that held things together.  It felt good to be the glue for a change.

36 was being a cheerleader; it was being more Tigger and less Eeyore.  36 was saying, “We can do this!” when you want to say, “Do we know what we’re doing?”  It felt good to be a Tigger for a change.

36 was being a caretaker.  It was spoon feeding your kid ice cream when she breaks her leg.

IMG_270036 was playing Barbies on the couch for hours.  It was using a chopstick to scratch that itch inside her cast, even though the doctor told you not to. 36 was spray painting a wagon Caribbean Blue so she could still perform her duties as flower girl at your best friend’s wedding.

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36 was saying you weren’t going to cry at your best friend’s wedding, but then crying tears of happiness the entire weekend.

You remember all the years you didn’t cry at all, because you were just kinda numb.  So at 36, you are grateful for the tears, for the best friend singing Bon Jovi with the band, for the ability to feel real joy for someone else, all the way down to your french manicured bridesmaid toes.  Because for so many years you stood slightly outside the joy; you didn’t think you deserved to be in it.  At 36, you know that was a lie; that the only one who kept you on the bench was yourself.  So now you jump into the joy.

IMG_278836 was loving a dog through her final days, even though you never thought of yourself as a “dog person.”  It was letting her make out with you until you broke out in hives, letting her eat people food and lifting her up on the couch so she could watch TV.

IMG_348936 was lying on the floor with her in the vet’s office, crying and whispering “I Love you, Ellie-Dog” over and over and over until it was…over.  Your heart is broken, but you would do it all over again in a New York minute.  At 36, you see the tender beauty in having your heart broken.  At 36, you know this is a gift.

36 was about dreaming big.

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36 was learning that sometimes dreams change.  Sometimes dreams become a horse of a different color. And you just have to roll with it.  You have to believe that the real dream is bigger and better than the one you manifested in your mind.

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36 was wanting everyone to be ok.  And trying to make everything ok for everyone.  And then realizing that sometimes you can’t.  And you just have to roll with that, too.

37 will be different; I can already feel the shift.

Phil is finding his groove at work; he has his helmet on.  He is in it to win it.  He will be ok.

The girls are finding their feet back in PA.  Summer has healing powers.  They swim, do yoga in the driveway, sell lemonade on the corner.  I am amazed by their resilience.  They will be ok, too.

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And when school starts, Phoebe will be in all-day kindergarten.  Those precious years of just her and I are behind me.  My little buddy, my co-pilot, my Pandora DJ.

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So that leaves….me.

Me at 37.

I think it’s gonna be good.

I’ve got some ideas.

Stick around. I’ll let you know how it all shakes out.