To Make A Snow Angel On a Stranger's Grave
And other things on my bucket list
Hello Sweet Community,
A year ago I wrote what I called “a new kind of bucket list.” It wasn’t an index of wild adventures. It required no bungee jumps, wingsuits, or hot air balloons. Instead, I listed my emotional dreams, goals for my spirit and perspective in this lifetime. A few things on that list were:
To know what lives at the root of my fear. To weed that garden until only truth blooms.
To see exactly what parts of me are comforted by other people’s approval and comfort those parts myself instead.
To know that shame can’t live in the light, and let the light fall wherever I am hiding.
To interrupt my judgments, criticisms, and blames knowing they are almost always trying to distract me from my own pain.
To see people as a mystery, especially those I know best.
Since writing that bucket list, I’ve had many conversations with friends about their own internal-aspirations for their lifetime. Such conversations are my favorite, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t eventually ask each other, “Is there anything you just really want to do?” I had a few things on my list. Surfing for the first time (check). Performing poetry on stage again (check). Doing a live show backed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (maybe someday!) But as exciting as that all sounds, not one of those dreams ignites me as much as what most of us were taught to think of as the little things.
A quote I recently heard by
My bucket list of little things aims to live every moment as if it’s my first. To find the glory in what a seasoned eye might falsely consider mundane. In the process of writing it, I was reminded how incredible every single moment can be if I allow myself to be truly present. I’ll share a list of my biggest tiniest dreams here, now, with you:
To sit with the mourning dove who cries for her lost love.
To mend a friend’s clothes with my grandmother’s thimbles.
To make rose petal tea from the rose bush that always scratches me when I walk by.
To decoupage my piano with love poems.
To sweep the kitchen floor in the morning sun.
To sip sweet coffee in a treehouse in October.
To sing folk songs around a campfire with my friend who wrote them.
To fix the mailbox after the snow plough knocks it down. After the windstorm knocks it down. After a bear knocks it down. And then a hundred times again.
To say goodnight to my mother every night of the year.
To water a friend’s begonia back to life while they’re out of town.
To get a haircut in an old fashioned barber shop chair.
To shed my dead ends and keep growing.
To chop wood in a soft falling snow as my family’s laughter sifts through the chimney.
To warm everyone I love.
To bake a stew inside of a pumpkin in a kitchen festive with Meg’s touch.
To be the safe place my oldest dog buries her best treats beneath.
To spend the day singing while waiting for the results of a scan.
To hold Meg’s hand.
To watch a squirrel rebuild her nest in the only pine that survived the storm.
To hold the hospital’s elevator door open for a stranger minutes after I’ve received hard news.
To grow tomatoes. To taste the divine.
To go on an apple picking date and tie Meg’s apron as the house fills with the scent of pie.
To tip the barista.
To grass-stain my knees while weeding the flowerbeds.
To clean the garage.
To let the dandelions live.
To wipe the steam from the bathroom mirror and look older.
To find the beauty in what someone else threw away.
To be kind to the neighbor who hasn’t yet learned to be kind to me.
To feel a spider walk the tightrope of my lifelines while I carry her, carefully, outside.
To run late for an important appointment because a row of geese were teaching me there is no such thing as time.
To chase a train I can’t possibly catch.
To tell all of my secrets.
To cry joy into my own chest.
To sleep on a canopy bed beneath the stars and invent new constellations.
To love the birds who built a nest in my basketball hoop more than I love playing basketball.
To celebrate every shot I miss, not just the ones I make.
To go surfing and not conquer a single wave.
To walk like a person who will never forget the gift of walking.
To make a snow angel on a stranger’s grave.
To stay awake all night to memorize the way the moonlight reaches through the skylight to touch Meg’s face.
To root for the baby wrens as they learn how to carve figure-eights into the sky.
To drive without a destination through the landscape I fell in love with when I was twenty-two.
To watch a child write their first line of poetry with a blue crayon.
To shake the mud off the welcome mat in spring.
To sing the high notes of a song that has no high notes.
To feel Meg’s warm arms wrap around me from the back of our two seater bike.
To dance while grieving.
To loan a stranger my favorite pen and not ask for it back.
To be there where the mourning dove’s love finally returns.
To lose my temper and love myself even before I’ve found it again.
To thank the nurse too many times.
To makeout at the drive in.
To feel the ocean in an above ground pool.
To love while I’m hurting.
To forget my phone.
To remember everything.
Lately I’ve been encouraging everyone I love to write a list like this of their own. And I consider this community beloved. So. Will you share your list of little things?
Thank you so much for being here, everyone.
Love, Andrea 🖤
Thank you for this. Living in the cancer club myself, we are a deep bunch! wholeheartly walking through life, often because what other choice do we have.
My list is as follows:
✨️to search for the love in everyone and see the god in them
✨️to show up every day and dig out what blocks my river of love to flow
✨️to find gratitude in dog walks even when my legs are jello and aching.
✨️to look at the sky and write poetry about the clouds
✨️to write poems about a love in have never experienced yet
✨️to hold a hot cup of coffee for as many days as I am able, wherever I am able
✨️to love people in their humans, and especially in their fear
✨️to allow myself to be seen, even if i don't know who I am anymore
✨️to plant seeds i may never see grow
✨️to trust love... always trust love. Even when it's illogical
Thank you for being you, I deeply love and appreciate you for how you show up in the world. Love to you ❤️🔥
To lay by my 4 year old at bedtime and reverently listen to her breath calm, soften, and slow as she falls asleep.
To delight in, examine, and learn the map of freckles on my 8yr old’s cheeks.
To marvel in wonder at my 10year old as she shares what she finds interesting in the book she is reading.
These small things actually feel as big as the cosmos.
One other thing…
To see Andrea Gibson on stage with the Colorado Symphony.
Thank you for your beautiful words. 🧡