I don't. There are lots of things I'd like to do before I "kick the bucket" -- am I the only one who just recently discovered that was the root of the phrase? -- but I also know I can die happy without doing most of them. Well, not happy to die, but certainly not feeling my time here was a complete waste.
This weekend my daughter and her husband are moving to Chicago from New York. From my home town and their adopted home town, to my adopted hometown and her home town and his soon to be home town because, for them, home is sweet as long as the other one is there too. (As long as he remains a Cubs fan.) This move is certainly a wish list item for me, since I have no bucket list. Semantics aside, my bucket runneth over.
They've been together in New York City for about four years. It never seemed all that far away to me, since I've never completely let it go. When I left, more than thirty years ago, I was terrified. I had spent time away before -- in college, in law school -- but I always assumed I would be back. So did my parents. The 800 miles was bad enough; add to it the gentile waiting for me at the other end of my journey, and, well, let's just say we had a bit of patching up to do over the next few months. Okay, years.
I've been thinking a lot about that time, when I chose to uproot myself and begin a life where I knew nobody and had no job, knowing my father was just about the only thing standing in between my mother's angry head and a hot oven. On my last night as an official New Yorker, friends from work took me out for dinner. I can't even remember their names. They came back with me to my studio apartment to help me pack, and stayed with me until the movers came in the morning. On the plane, I set next to a little boy who was off to see his dad in Chicago for the summer. We were kind of in the same boat, that young boy and I. Brave faces, ambivalent hearts, scared to death.
It doesn't matter that I know this was their plan, my daughter and her husband, to move back, eventually, to the home town she loves. This week, I could not help but be a little wistful, as she told me about a farewell run with one friend, a final barre class at the gym, a goodbye bash at one of their favorite haunts. Four years may not be a long time, but there will be so much for them to remember, fondly, and much for me to remember on their behalf. The craziness, the commotion, the exhilaration. Their engagement in Central Park. Their weekly Sunday dinners with my mom and brother. Their first home together.
They are en route as I write this. I know they are excited, and, like I said, my bucket runneth over. I just can't stop thinking about that little boy on the plane so long ago, and that scared little twenty-five year old girl sitting next to him.
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