It’s a good thing
that getting rich was never on my bucket list, because I have spent most of my
life as a student or writer/editor, and am now embarrassingly grateful for
Social Security and senior discounts. My own goals have been different, though
they required some money to be accomplished.
After a few years
of working to put my first husband through grad school, I was envious and
frustrated enough to want a Ph.D. for myself. Never mind the fact that an M.A.
was nearly sufficient for my needs—I was grimly determined to be Dr. Stone. It
meant denying myself and my new husband many things. However, at the age of 46
I was able to clutch a diploma from the Stanford University Graduate School of
Education. An important item crossed off the bucket list!
After earning the
doctorate, I hoped to help design an NSF curriculum project like one of those I
had edited. However, funding for curriculum projects was winding down by that
time, and so I set up an editorial business, The Stone Cottage, instead. It was
meant to be a temporary situation. I closed the business 30 years later. . . Owning my own business was very satisfying in many ways, but
it had never been a bucket-list item.
When the phone
rang in 2000 and Dr. Robert Krebs asked if I would like to write my own biology
textbook for Greenwood Press, it seemed like a gift from heaven. I tried to
restrain myself, and instead screamed, “Yes! Yes!” Authoring my own science
book, rather than co-authoring or editing yet another one, had been a dream for
years. Writing The Basics of Biology turned out to be very difficult (and
not very profitable), especially as my husband was dying during those years;
somehow I persisted, and have been pleased with the results.
Being a good
caregiver was unplanned, yet became a major goal during my husband’s illness
and my mother’s aging. They are both dead now, and I did take good care of
them. Nothing I have ever done has been so important.
Studying French
in college had exposed me to that graceful language and literature, and I
planned to travel to France at the first opportunity. The years passed, though,
and I was unable to cross France off my list until 2005, when I finally went to
Paris with an Elderhostel group. Though the tour was wonderful, I should have
managed somehow to go there when I was young.
My bucket list
today has changed greatly from what it was years ago. I never expected to spend
my retirement years living in the woods and traveling in a motorhome! Yet, this
way of life has led me to wishing to visit all the national parks—it is most
unlikely that I will manage that—in addition to traveling abroad again and doing many more things before I kick the bucket.
