Every time Chuck and I do new amazing things, he says, “check that off your bucket list!” And I repeat to him… “I don’t have a bucket list.”
What do I yearn for? *To be an influencer. *To encourage and teach reading and thinking. *To laugh out loud.
Chuck’s wish: That I would get dressed so I could go for a walk to Craft Local … a bar (across the street from our hotel) with music and craft beers. This wish was said from under the covers we both plowed under after a late lunch and 5 hours on Montana roads. Chuck’s needs are simple. He never had a bucket list. He did what was in front of him, and he did things to make me happy.
Four years ago Chuck tried to show me the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park after a Panama Canal Cruise, but I got pneumonia, landed in the hospital in Kingman Arizona, and scared the willies out of the doctors by presenting with an ascending aortic aneyrysm. “Go home!” the emergency room doctor said! “Get to a BIG hospital where you can be treated by a thoracic surgeon.” “What’s that?” I asked, coughing, hard. Here we are four years later, fulfilling Chuck’s list of getting me to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, but adding so much more!!!! We have added seeing Las Cruces, New Mexico (a wonderful small town near the border, artsy, mural strewn walls, festivals, a small Spanish village with a beautiful church.) The Tucson desert and the Biosphere where astronauts trained for a space station stay of 2 years. Tombstone (home of Val Kilmer and Kurt Russell)! Bisbee, a tiny copper mining town with great red pits of abandoned copper mines. Bisbee is home to the old “Copper Queen Hotel” which features in “Desert Heat” by J.A. Jance. I picked up the book in a quaint artsy book store in Bisbee…. It is a series about a murdered sheriff’s wife (the sheriff is murdered, the wife will solve it)… anyhow… we were there, and the story meanders between Bisbee and Tombstone. Never thought that I’d go there! “Been there, done that!” and it was wonderful. But I never thought about the four lovely towns before planning this trip. What am I? boring???? not a dreamer?
On this trip we remembered my Assumption student whom we haven’t seen in over 45 years… So I facebooked her and she answered with an address in a tiny town near Missoula, Montana. The little meander to Cathy’s house led us up to the Glacier National Park!!!! We did not do the edges of the 10,000 foot high mountains as edges scare me!!!! We drove around the park and it was wonderful. We are now headed for Mount Rushmore and the Bad Lands!!! more later.
I guess what I want is to know what you want to do? Have you thought about it? Done it? I am sad that I haven’t been an influencer. I was not able to give my nieces and nephews the kind of education and dreams I had… We were all too spread out, and I didn’t get along too well with my Sister, their mother, who is gone now. She passed away while we were on this trip. Without being too pushy, I help where I can with love. That’s all we can do, isn’t it. Pray and Love. God bless us; God help us to see his grandeur!