Like so many others nudged along by Maggie, I’m starting to compile a Life List. It’s been surprisingly hard, but not for the reason I expected… and the very difficulty of compiling this list makes me more aware of the blessings in my life.


Some Life List ideas come easily, but need to be more specific:
- Publish a non-fiction article or book.
- Publish a fictional story or novel.
- Be a good aunt. Eleven nieces and nephews at last count, and those are just the blood relatives, not the near-nieces and -nephews (children of friends). Holy cow!

And here’s an example of how I’m making my list items more concrete, more detailed:
- Regain my fluency in French. Watch Les Diaboliques without needing the sub-titles.

Some are simple, but may surprise you:
- Get a driver’s license. I know, right?

Predictably, the most specific items are culinary:
- Eat a perfect lobster roll. The summer before he died, Dad was appalled to learn that I have never had a lobster roll, and he pledged to take me out for one. We never made it, and I still haven’t had a lobster roll. This summer, I will… and if I like it, I’ll keep trying them until I find a perfect one.
- Have a proper cream tea, with scones and clotted cream and jam and flowered porcelain and whatever else a proper tea entails.
- Have a full English breakfast, wherever, whenever.
- Have a full English breakfast. For breakfast. In England. With a hot cuppa. Mmm.
- Eat a croissant within sight of the Eiffel Tower.
- Ditto, a bagel and the Statue of Liberty.
- Learn to make a perfect cappuccino.
- Finish that cookbook.
- Make doughnuts!
- Master a fantastic pizza dough recipe. My current one is fine, but not the perfect windowpane dough that makes a chewy, authentic pizza crust.
- Learn to bake a lovely layer cake. For all my kitchen confidence and long years of experience, light fluffy cake is one thing I simply have not mastered.

Some are sartorial:
- Wear those high-heeled boots. I knew the heels were impractical, but they seduced me with their black leather beauty and bargain price. Days later, I was hit by a car, promoting those heels from “impractical” to “impossible.” I’ve never worn them. Yet.
- Find an occasion to wear my claret velvet gown. If I can’t find the occasion, I’ll make the occasion.
- Make and block a felt hat I would be proud to wear.

Some are vague, but that’s okay:
- Dance on a rooftop.

Some are silly:
- Learn how to give myself a really good haircut.
- Host a Star Wars viewing party: the three original films, as original as possible. (None of this “Greedo shot first” nonsense.)

Some are private:
- [redacted]

Some are easy to dream up, but are frustratingly out of reach, maybe impossible:
- Eliminate my chronic debilitating back pain.
So I break them down into smaller, more manageable items… items that belong in my daily life, but don’t belong on my Life List.

Some sound good, but just aren’t me:
- Make a quilt from sentimentally significant pieces of worn-out clothing.
- Finish a marathon.
(…yeah, those would be good Life List entries for someone else. They hold no magic for me.)

Some will probably drop off the list to be replaced by something more suitable:
- Learn to knit. Again. This time, knit something you’ll love to wear.

Some pop up in my mind and then immediately present themselves as opportunities to be grabbed:
- See Parliament-Funkadelic live in concert.

edited to add: spurred by my recent summer goals, I’m adding:
- drink 100 bottles of sparkling wine. I’ve set the bubbly counter to start about ten days ago. Since then, I’ve shared three bottles. That means 97 to go. (And when I hit 100, maybe I reset the goal to 1000.)

But here’s the funny thing. As I muse and ponder and research possibilities of adventures to put on my life list, I find that, hey, I’ve already done the thing I would put on the list. Here are some life list items I’ve already done:

- Reconnect with a distant friend, and find a way to make that reconnection less tenuous, more significant, and a daily part of your life. I love you, Elli.
- Spread a tall tale. Someday I’ll tell you about my niece L, my stories of growing up, and The Box.
- Spend a whole day blowing bubbles. At the end of that autumn day, I was chilled through and tuckered out, but oddly peaceful. I suspect the long hours of deep controlled breathing had an effect.
- Zip through the jungle howling like Tarzan.
- Go on as the understudy.
- Take part in a parade. The mother of my childhood friend L recruited me to toss candy from a van. It was before seatbelt laws; L and I tottered on a box in the middle of a slow-moving van, stuck out a an unfinished sunroof from our shoulders up, and pelted the crowd with hard candy as the metal seams chafed our armpits.
- This one is sobering but important: give a eulogy when the grieving mother asks you to. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and I’m deeply grateful that I did it.
- Rehab a house. To my surprise, I had a knack for refinishing; my ex didn’t. His family-built Victorian owes every straight wall seam, every smooth plaster patch, and several working hinges to me.
- Have a cocktail named for me. In my Chicago days, a new local bar and an old local bartender were casting about for a signature summer drink. I stepped behind the bar one noontime and whipped up some planter’s punch, scribbling as I went; the next week, the bar distributed fliers advertising Aunt [Elsa's] Sweet Rum Punch.
- Drink a real Cuba libre (with old-fashioned sugary Coke) at a swim-up bar; optional: watch iguanas play overhead as you drink it. That trip to Costa Rica was a-okay, Mom.
- Make my own damn wedding feast (with The Fella’s help, and a cake from Gaoo). Phew, that was a lotta work… and completely worth it!
- Take part in a massive snowball fight. New Year’s Eve 1989, near midnight: a spontaneous snowball fight broke out in a crowded downtown intersection. Dozens of us pelted each other with snowballs, and the mounted police officers laughed and laughed.
- Become candy-competent! Once I understood the chemistry behind candymaking, I was freed to start tinkering with classic recipes to good effect. I’ve been teaching myself to make spicy and exotic brittles of a self-devised recipe, old-fashioned toffee, and I tackled the finicky task of tempering chocolate.

And that doesn’t even count the unpredictable, the fortuitous, the stuff that’s impossible to orchestrate, like:
- Meet someone you love more than you knew you could, who understands you inside-out and likes you anyway. Now marry him.