Written by Amanda Coop
“WHAT’S on your bucket list, buddy?” I asked my five-year-old son, anticipating the obvious question:
“What’s a bucket list?”
“It’s a list of things you want to do before you die,” Miss 9 offered helpfully from across the room.
Given we’d never discussed it previously, it was hardly a surprise Mr 5 didn’t know the term.
Making a bucket list has never really been, well, on my bucket list.
In making a list of things you want to do, is it not redundant to add the words “before I die”? I mean, that’s obvious, right? I’ve never met anyone with a list of things they want to do after they die. As far as I know, the movie Weekend at Bernie’s wasn’t based on a true story.
With the explanation, I expected Mr 5 to say he wanted to buy every toy in the world or own all the Minecraft texture packs in the PlayStation store. (If you’re not sure what Minecraft texture packs or the PlayStation store are, just move on and count yourself lucky. Your wallet doesn’t want to know.)
Instead, his adorable answer was: “I want to spend time with my family.”
What a sweet wish, not to mention much cheaper and easier than buying myriad toys or texture packs.
“I haven’t got a bucket list because I’m not planning to die any time soon,” Miss 9 said (logic, right there). “But there is something I’ve always wanted to do and that’s go somewhere it snows.”
Well, it turns out that if Miss 9 and I had bucket lists, we’d both be wanting to check off the same item. I’ve always wanted to see snow, since I can remember. My dream (apart from winning the lottery, of course, or being able to lose weight by eating chocolate) is to have a white Christmas and do all the Christmassy things you can’t do while sweating your way through a 35-degree festive season in Queensland.
That’s probably a bit too ambitious budget-wise for us any time in the near future (and who knows when international travel will resume on any major scale?) but we could at least make plans to see snow in Australia.
It made me wonder why I’ve allowed myself to reach middle age without accomplishing what is an easily achievable aim, and I resolved to make plans instead of pushing it to the vague status of “one day”.
I don’t want Miss 9 to be telling her kids in a few decades’ time that she’s never seen snow.
But I hope Mr 5 still wants to hang out with us all.