If there is a characteristic hallmark of modern American culture, the drive to get it done, to make it happen, to power through—it is the “to do” list. The ongoing battle between past, present and future in everyday life all scribbled down in pencil or pen with the check marks, or lines through whole sections of our day if we’re lucky. For me it all started with one of those lists. A seemingly innocuous tabulation of the things I wanted to accomplish by the end of a short northern summer with a new man in my life: drag him up and down a few mountains, dance outside in the midnight sun, take a walk through the neighborhoods we liked the most. It was a talisman against letting another season slip by, and against him slipping through my fingers as he’d been doing since the spring arrived. Something I could throw lightly and invitingly out on the table as a way of drawing us together without the pressure he seemed to find in everything else I proposed. It didn’t work out quite as I'd hoped--a friend pointing out later that such a list equated (a whole few months of) future plans together. I might as well have asked him to marry me.
“I’m glad you know what you want.” came the reply, “But I don't. I don’t have time...there’s just too much going on.” I. Just. Don’t. Know. Oh, but he did. Wise for himself left me feeling foolish with my list still in hand. I didn’t take that too well. The story is an old one—opened the window the rest of the way and watched him fly right out of it and have more than a few bruises from running into the glass over and over after he closed it behind him. It can still ache in those places not to have had more time (...but, that cute boy is the best kind of boy/friend a grrrl could ask for, even when these days the emphasis is on "friend").
Somehow that list kept me going with my aching head and heart. I climbed the mountain, and a couple more for good measure, dragging my dog instead of a man. I danced by myself in the parking lot of a bar on the most perfect of solstice evenings (and again a month later). I walked and hiked so much it felt like the trails knew my name by my footsteps, or after I dragged the ancient bike out of the shed, could hear me coming on the squeaking old wheels, going round and round and round on my circuits. The list somehow kept me sane…as I tried to make sense of a summer unexpectedly alone. But it was more than just a salve for loss, it became hope. Hope that I could remember and pursue things I'd always wanted to accomplish and endlessly delayed (during an endlessly dysfunctional marriage). I could do them, I DID do them--with or without someone holding my hand.
New dogs still being the best known cure for old tricks, I decided I needed another list, this one for winter, knowing that in a time of darkness, I’d have to shore up against the cold and lonely days. But instead of picking only things I’d always wanted to do, like take up downhill skiing again, I found myself drawn to things that I’d never considered--real challenges. Like training for a triathlon even though I hardly ever run, bike or swim (most likely this brainwave started because I’d gone to a function for a tri-club and found it full of rather buff men, but nevertheless, a previously unexplored area of interest) . Soon, the brain was bristling with new possibilities outside the old comfort zone. What could I do or learn that I had NEVER done, or even thought of before? Water polo, or crash a wedding? Go on a blind date or get a tattoo? Furthermore, why was I most qualified to pick such a task for myself, having never even contemplated such exploits? I found myself wondering then, what would a total stranger looking at me think up for me “to do”? What kind of surprising list could be generated by people who had no investment in the outcome except for entertaining themselves with the results and watching my progress? What unexpected things would I have to try, if trying was someone else's idea of a good time?
I was quickly reaching the brilliant conclusion that this kind of list might just save my all too comfortable ass once and for all. Now, I just needed some partners in crime, some fellow Try-Babies, as we would be called...and who could be more (in)appropriate than the two crazies who have joined together with me on this site?
I am in soooooo much trouble.
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