I’m brushing my teeth this morning, and as usual, my brain is running a full marathon. Local news says school is starting soon. I haven’t written a blog for weeks. It’s my last quiet day before my husband gets home from his fishing trip. Why is Frankie downstairs barking like she’s trying to warn me about absolutely nothing, but with such great passion?
This is how my mind works – always active, always loud, always juggling seventeen tabs. It’s why I tell myself I need to meditate more. I need to quiet my mind. It’s also why I don’t meditate. My mind doesn’t “take a break.”
While thinking about school starting, my brain took a sharp left turn to the year we took our youngest, Mark, to Iowa State for freshman move-in. Empty next syndrome was warming up in the bullpen. Even though my ex-husband and I were divorced, we both knew that day was going to be rough. We’re terrible at goodbyes, and even though he wasn’t leaving forever, it still felt like some kind of ending.
But then my brain – helpful as ever, asked:
What year did we take him to Ames?
What year did he graduate from ISU?
Hell, what year did he graduate high school?
And the answer was: Ma’am, we don’t know.
Shouldn’t a mother know these things?
I’ve never been good with dates. I can’t remember my kid’s age without doing the math. I once wished my grandson a happy 7th birthday… twice… and he wasn’t seven either time. My kids shrug it off because they know their mother’s brain is basically an Etch a Sketch during an earthquake.
My mom remembered every date, every age, every detail, but she wrote everything down. Daily calendars, notes, reminders. Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe the dates should matter more to me, but they don’t. The moments do. The feelings do. The people do. The numbers? Not so much.
Thankfully, my sister-in-law gives me a calendar every Christmas with all the important dates pertinent to me, already written in. It’s the greatest gift for someone like me. And yet – the worst thing I ever did was forget her actual birthday. The woman literally hands me a personalized cheat sheet every year, and I still manage to blow it. If anyone has the right to roll her eyes at me, it’s her.
My job is simply to look at the calendar… which becomes a problem on the days I’m still living in last month. I may have missed the entire first week of the current month. What are the chances somebody had a birthday during those first few days of the new month? Don’t ask.
Maybe this means I’m not living in the present moment. Maybe I’m either replaying the past or pre-worrying about the future. And lately, with so many friends and family facing medical crises, my mind goes to the big stuff – the any day could be your last day stuff.
That’s when the word bucket list popped into my head. People facing grim diagnoses suddenly doing the things they always meant to do – travel, adventures, experiences they kept putting off. So I asked myself: Do I have a bucket list?
The answer… NO.
Travel isn’t my thing. I love the idea of being somewhere beautiful, but not the packing, the airport, the plane, the logistics, the pet-care arrangements, the watering of plants, the whole production. I can enjoy someone else’s vacation photos just as much as being there – sometimes more, because pictures don’t include humidity, crowds, or the smell of someone’s sunscreen.
Take our wedding in Hawaii. The photos? Stunning. Magazine-worthy.
The actual spot? A tiny patch of sand with a couple lying behind us like they were extras in a low-budget beach movie. Gorgeous ocean in front of us, trashy chaos behind us. Reality rarely matches the brochure.
The reality is, it isn’t about what we do, it’s about who we spend it with. It’s about the memories made. For me, memories don’t require airports, itineraries, or bucket lists. They can be made right in my own backyard, or up at our cabin, where life slows down enough for me to actually feel it.
That’s where the good stuff happens: watching sunsets with the people I love, grandkids fishing off the dock, pizza on the boat because it tastes better out on the water, fish fries with Papa Tan and Limon & Dt. Cokes on the porch while a Sage & Citrus candle burns in the hanging lantern.
When we’re there, the world softens around us. That’s my idea of heaven. Family time. Simple moments. Real memories. The kind you don’t need to write down to remember, because they stay with you, even when the dates don’t.
And that’s kind of the theme here, isn’t it? Reality rarely matches the brochure of life.
My thoughts get jumbled when I haven’t written for a while, but underneath all the noise – the dates I can’t remember, the barking dog, the bucket lists I don’t have, the travel I don’t want – there’s a simple reality:
I don’t need big adventures to feel like I’m really living.
I don’t need perfect dates to prove I love my people.
I don’t need a bucket list to check off to feel fulfilled.
I just need to be present for the moments that matter – even if I can’t remember what year they happened.
So grab your favorite drink, it’s time for a toast:
Here’s to the overactive brains, the forgotten birthdays, the calendars we apparently need a calendar to remember to check, the bucket lists we don’t have, and the travel we enjoy only when someone else does it.
Cheers to living life one chaotic, mismatched, reality-vs-brochure moment at a time and to remembering that the best adventures don’t need a passport – just a porch, a sunset, and people who don’t mind when we forget their birthday.
Cheers!
