Listmaking

Went to the first Navy Spouses Club book club last week. The book was The Next Thing On My List by Jill Smolinski. I didn’t read it because the library didn’t have a copy, but a friend had told me about it and I flipped through one of the other wives' books at the coffee shop where we met. The novel is a short, female version of The Bucket List and geared to book clubs. Perfect for talking about what you want to do with your life. So we talked a little about characters and more about what is on our lists of things we want to do with our lives and what philosophies guide how we make our lists (this was from a list of questions in the back of the book.) Easy to make a list of things you’d like to do. Harder to make a list of things you’re likely to do. Takes more thought to make a list of things you ought to do to live the life you want to live.

So first on our boat ride and then again on our camping trip this past weekend, I gave more thought to making lists. For the past few years, I’ve been caught up in the details of life, and suddenly, now that I don’t have so many details to attend to with kids in school and volunteer activities curtailed somewhat, I find that I’m something of a stranger to myself. Maybe it’s that the middle aged me doesn’t look like what I expected as the teen me, and I forgot to change that image during the young adult me years. This is the kind of navel gazing that drives my husband (and myself eventually) batty. Maybe this is an attempt at a mini-retreat inspired by getting a little fall weather finally over the Columbus Day weekend in Georgia.

A few things on my list:
          Run another marathon
          Paint a framable picture
          Write something someone loves
          Own a HOME – farm? – near people I love
          Declutter – but keep and arrange attractively things that make me happy
          Visit a lot of places (without tour guides): A UK authors trip, a footsteps of Paul trip to the Holy Land, a cruise around the Mediterranean and Greece following Homer as a guide, the Pacific Northwest, Prince Edward Island, someday get to Africa, Asia, and Australia - might as well make an around the world trip to every continent.

While I love travel and thinking about places I'd like to go, I would probably be just as happy to stay at home if I lived somewhere I really loved, with lots of trees and trails.  Then there's the fact that tourist travel and checking off achievements don't really fit with a philosophy of life centered on love of God and neighbor.  So perhaps the better list is one that focuses on how to love better - kind of like the "love list" talked about on this blog or the "gratitude list" on this blog.

Things I would put on the love/thanks list:
          Camping with the family. Camping with friends and extended family. Being outside in crisp cool weather with no phones or schedules or computers in a place where the kids can get dirty and run and be loud without restraint (at least until quiet hours).

              Dan mentioned he loved being patted by pudgy toddler hands as they lean on your shoulder. A little comfort from the comforted.

              Books, especially books like the one I finished on the drive from GA for the next book club: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty. I had been wanting to read her while in Mississippi, and was completely satisfied and more. Tough beginning, but once in, I never wanted to leave the home of the Fairchilds on the Delta, with all the cousins and in-laws and secrets and suspicions and jealousies and loves. A fullbodied envisioning of extended family life, although sometimes what was left unsaid was infuriating – like whether George was teasing about having the pretty girl on the way to Memphis or whether Ellen’s dream came true or whether Dabney actually loved Troy or just the idea of shocking her family – but true to way families let each other see only so much of what’s held close to the heart. 
 
      Sleeping in my own bed after laboring to merit a comfortable rest – like hiking ridges with a toddler on a shoulder and sleeping on the ground for a couple of nights.

           Churches like the one we worshiped in on Sunday: Suited to its surroundings, simple, recalling an old white clapboard church but with modern clean lines.