Who needs a bucket list?

How many times have you heard someone ask, “What’s on your bucket list?”

I’ve always been a fan of lists (not necessarily the ‘bucket’ variety…but lists). I find that writing something down tends to make my goals real and tangible and to hold me accountable. Also, it helps with remembering things. But that’s another story.

So, how about a bucket list? Do you have a list of things you want to do before you 'shuffle off this mortal coil'?

This is a concept so deeply ingrained in our current culture that there are multiple self-help books and websites dedicated to helping you create your own bucket list.

You don’t have one? No worries. You won’t have any trouble finding friends and family (along with those books and websites) who’d love to build or expand your bucket list. They’ll come up with things like visiting the Seven Wonders of the World, climbing the Swiss Alps, spending a week in a Buddhist monastery in Bhutan or at an all-inclusive resort in Bali, etc. Things to do before you die that will push your limits or broaden your horizons and help you live your best life...more or less.

• Well, Jim and I don’t have a bucket list. Now, why is that?
   Because in the course of working and raising our children, we wrote and we wrote and we wrote. Writing was something we could do together, help pay our bills with, and even ‘live’ the adventures of our characters. And we got to see a bit of the world through our research and the conferences we attended. We loved and still love what we were doing.

• Because for many people, making a bucket list has come to incorporate one-upmanship.

• Because no two people see life the same.

 What does that last point mean? How many times does someone recommend and really pump up a book, a movie, a vacation package? Then, you take the recommendation and go into it with high expectations, only to be disappointed. Basically, your experience does not live up to what you imagined it would be. Now, if you read that same book, watch that same movie, or go on that trip without all the buildup—with only the mindset that I’m going to enjoy this, for there’s no high expectations—then the chances are that you’ll really enjoy that experience.

Now, are there places we’d like to visit some day? Yes, absolutely. Are there things we’d like to do that we’ve never have done before? Yes, for sure. Do we make a list of them? No. Especially not now.

These days, my bucket list couldn’t even include going to the dentist for my semi-annual cleaning. My oncologist finds that too compromising for my condition.

I recently read this passage in a Psychology Today article: “Building up the items on your bucket list in a way that your life is not complete [without them] is bound to leave you disappointed.”

No disappointments here. My life is complete, and I have so much to be thankful for. But Jim and I are definitely interested in going on spontaneous (and planned) getaways…oncologist permitting. Bali and Bhutan are not in the cards, but we might take that road trip up the Pacific coastline…

How about you? Do you have a bucket list? What do you think of it?

A friend has been kind enough to set up a GoFundMe fundraiser.

Here is the link to that page.

Thank you!

The Giving Tree...and the Tree that Fell from the Sky

Jim and I have always been tree lovers (at risk of being called ‘tree huggers’). And we mean that in the literal sense of word. Every house we’ve lived in, we’ve always planted a tree, or at least had a tree adventure.One of the favorite books we used to read to our sons when they were younger was The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Regardless of how many times we read that book, I always sobbed through the very last page.

Did I mention tree adventures?

There was a giant mulberry tree at our first house in Westerly, Rhode Island. Before we moved in, it was scheduled to be cut down. Hundreds of birds sat on that tree, ate the colorful berries, and then proceeded to poop on the neighbors’ cars. It took some friendly interaction from us – followed by cooking and delivering mulberry jam every year – to save that old tree’s life.

When we bought our home in the Point section of Newport, RI, the courtyard shaded by our white lilac became the fragrance-filled gathering place for countless neighborhood get-togethers.

The apricot tree we planted in our house in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, was a source of great amusement for the neighborhood kids. When it started bearing fruit, they looked like bees working around the hive. (The Shakers had a saying about the importance of growing enough for the neighbors too!) The kiwi wasn’t as successful, but we did have some luscious-looking branches.

And then there was the gigantic weeping willow tree in our backyard in Connecticut where our sons and their friends played volleyball and basketball for days on end. There was even a mini-tornado that brought down spruce and white pines along the property border, but the weeping willow survived.

Of course, soon after moving to California, we had to plant our pomegranate and avocado trees. Our granddaughter harvested two pomegranates this past month. And there are more than a dozen still growing on the tree!

In each case, with all of the planting and occasional pruning, we’ve done our share of sweating, hard digging and constant attention. We’ve had days of pondering whether the hole was deep enough or if the soil was fertilized enough. Once we considered if we should remove a boulder three feet down. But when it's all said and done, our trees have given us so many days of fun and conversation and adventure...and an occasional piece of fruit. (-:

But this week, we got an entirely new view of how someone else approaches the job.

A house recently purchased in our neighborhood had a half dozen VERY large, mature trees and at least a dozen shrubs planted yesterday. It took the workers less than a couple of hours. And how did they get it done? Take a guess after looking closely at the photo we took from our kitchen window. We're talking about seriously large equipment! Yes, that's the mother of all cranes in the left corner.

The couple moving in undoubtedly paid a great deal of money for this lightning quick landscaping...and that's great for them. But we still prefer the memories of our own giving trees much better than the tree that fell from the sky.

For Better or Worse… How We Started Writing as a Collaborative Team

If we dropped a penny in a jar every time someone asks us, “How on earth do you manage to write together?” we’d have enough to book that next roundtrip flight to Istanbul to see our granddaughter. Sometimes, we give them the short answer, to others the long answer, and a few get the in-between answer. And we don’t really mind the question.

Then comes the next one: “How did you start?”

Our collaboration started on a snowy day on a snowy weekend during a snowy winter. We were living in Pennsylvania, and our boys were small.

Nikoo: Jim had decided to submit a short story to a national writing contest posted in Writer’s Digest magazine. He was looking for publication credits he could add to his tenure portfolio at the college where he was teaching. The story was pure adventure and featured a guy trying to save his small sailboat in the middle of Newport harbor during a hurricane. I remembered him writing it in grad school.

Jim: Nikoo has always been a brutally honest person, and she has strong opinions. That’s just two of the many things I love about her. But I can get a little defensive about my writing. She was working as an engineer, but she was always a closet writer. I, on the other hand, pursued my writing openly. And for all our years prior to that snowy winter, she was my first reader. Anyway, before sending the story off, I asked her to read it again.

Nikoo: So I read it. Now honestly, who cares about a guy trying to save a catboat while scores of people are losing their homes and… I don’t remember what I said exactly.

Jim: She said, “Don’t bother.” Maybe she worded it in a gentler way, but that was the bottom line.

Nikoo: He turns around and asks me, “Could you do better?”

Jim: And she says, “WE could do better.”

An entire snowy weekend passed while the two of us sat side-by-side and a new story emerged.

The ‘man saves his catboat’ story turned into ‘a woman contemplating suicide boards her catboat in the middle of a hurricane’. Her past plays itself out in the course of battling this storm. Old and painful conflict with her father. Guilt that haunts her about the death of her brother. Failed relationships.

We both physically wrote portions of that story and contributed when we weren’t actually pounding the keyboard. Agreements and disagreements. Pizza. Kids swinging from the chandeliers in the background.

We loved it.

We sent the story off, knowing we’d done something special. That short story went on to win a national prize. But by the time we heard the results, we’d already started a novel. It was our first, The Thistle and the Rose. The first of many.

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