kick the bucket list
/Hang glide over the Rockies? Start the great American novel? Make apple pie from scratch?
Organize your family photos? Fuhgeddaboudit!
Otherwise, no time like the present to tackle the bucket list. But the dream is just a dream, and the pie is from a box if you don’t have apples and don’t go into the kitchen.
So, in the spirit of bringing Mohammed to the mountain, I boarded a boat on the west coast of Iceland praying for a lucky break to see the biggest creature on earth, the largest animal that’s ever lived, twice the size of measly T. rex, the kingliest, the most gigantic, the most behemoth of the behemoths—and how often can you use the word behemoth?—the sleek, elusive, one-hundred-foot, two-hundred-ton blue whale in the frigid waters near the Arctic Circle. Cold is its thing with all that warm blubber, and hopefully it would have some friends and relatives nearby.
The more behemoths the better. Once you say the word, you can’t stop tickling your fancy of possibility. This isn’t your average Big Mac or Big Gulp.
If Big Blue is not on your bucket list, at least it should be on your list of bodyguards.
The tongue of the blue whale can weigh as much as an elephant. Their hearts can be the size of a car. You could park your SUV right in its mouth and pay nothing but some crusty krill the size of a pinky finger, because these guys are crazy for tiny. Go figure.
So, with big on my brain and tiny on theirs, a bit of seasickness medication in my belly, and the bucket list close to kicking the bucket, time’s a wastin’, I donned a whale-sized bright blue jumpsuit and shuffled onboard looking like my underwater idol.
I wouldn’t do this for any other mammal.
As I waited with krill-full breath, I thought:
What is the bucket list, anyway, but a bunch of apple pies in the sky, self-delusional musings, imaginary “if onlys?” Do we ever think we’ll get through it all, and will we forgive ourselves if we don’t? At some point, don’t we realize we can’t go everywhere and do everything that life has to offer?
It’s both a relief and a bummer.
What, then, stays on the list? Maybe the dreams we want badly enough, more achingly bad than the rest, and could actually make happen. Unless we think we’re too old or too nervous or too busy or too dumb.
How do we light a fire under the blubber?
Fortunately, as I meditated on questions larger than the largest creature spanning the oceans, Big Blue was not contemplating its own salad-plate-sized navel, but swimming in my general direction.
Success! And it even brought friends and family!
We saw four blue whales that day, though I can’t figure how the guides knew it wasn’t the same one over and over. We watched their sleek bodies slip in and out of the waves, their flapping flukes rise and dip, their majestic sprays rain down upon the deep.
Not enough, in my naïve opinion, to know if it was Sue or Bill. But one apparent Sue had a baby Suzie with her, which thrilled us all to no end.
I’ve never made a quiche from scratch, though I’ve always wanted to. Or taken a painting class. Or learned French like a real Frenchwoman. Or gone to bed whenever I damn well please for days on end, not caring one whit about being off kilter with the whole wide world.
Not everything on the list requires a plane flight, seasick meds, and a lot of luck.
Time to move more blubber?