Crow’s Feet Writing Prompt #57
A Non-Existent Bucket List
I’m happy despite the absence of goals
There never really was a bucket list. Not on my wall or in my diary. At least I don’t think there was. By the time making one was a thing a person should do, I was up to my asshole in alligators.
Not alligators exactly but parenting 16 kids over four decades. Perhaps the same, or maybe worse than a congregation of the former, basking in the sun looking for dinner. Equally as mind-controlling as imagining the gator stalking your dog as you walk the path next to the swamp.
Decades of parenting took any long-term vision for what I’d like to do right off my radar. It was simply survival of the fittest. And that had to be me. Because I was the glue to the machine that ran our household.
There was no time to plan more than a camping trip with the hope that no one broke anything or needed stitches either before, during or after. That was about as close to a bucket as I got. The one we filled up to wash the dishes at the campsite or used to put out the fire. Or the one I used that one time my daughter-in-law gave me food poisoning. AKA self-inflicted alcohol poisoning.
I remember a few wishes along the way, but I’ve always been pragmatic. Why set your sights on…
