I remember when Maggie Mason first wrote about her “Mighty Life List,” lo those many years ago. Since then, especially as she started powering through the list, I’ve started my own version many times, but I never got around to finishing it. I finally did it, which means I get to start by crossing off item number one: Finish The List! One thing I love about Maggie’s approach is that it both encourages big thinking and a focus on the joys of day-to-day life. I tried to get a good mix of things in here–as she once said, these are the things I’d be bummed not to have done by the time I take my grand exit, as well as the things I’d be shocked not to have done. There’s a healthy dose of stuff I’m a little scared of, too, because I need to push myself. Do you have a List? If it’s online I’d love to see it. Maggie hosts an invitation-only event as well as a more public camp centered around “getting good at life,” and I hope I can get myself to one of them someday.

I’ll keep the list on a static page and cross things off (and post about them) as I go.

And so, without further ado, my list:

Finish the list
Learn to dive
Do cartwheels or backflips down a long carpeted hallway
Stay in an over-water bungalow
Have real family pictures taken (hopefully to be repeated every couple years!)
Read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe out loud to the kids
Have a swing hanging from a huge tree
Find a great pair of brown boots that are actually comfortable
Learn how to do something cute with my hair
Own a huge, worn Persian rug
Make a quilt out of B’s old dress shirts
Write a children’s book
Find some form of exercise that doesn’t make me miserable, and stick with it
Run a 5K
Start drawing again, and get better at it
Get portraits painted of each family member
Buy a country place and fix it up the way we want
Have a bunk room
Learn to apply liquid eyeliner
Pull a Miss Rumphius (make the world a more beautiful place; she planted Lupin seeds)
Own a big Paul Ferney painting
Frame the painting we bought in Paris that time
Get an invite to Mighty Summit (and go)
Hang chandeliers in the trees
Try something really scary (hang-gliding? zip-line?)
Find my signature style
Pitch and sell that DB profile I’ve had floating around for all those years
Get caught up on photo books for 2009-current, plus each year for each kid
Lie out on a clear night to watch the Perseid meteor showers
Overhaul my wardrobe to focus on fewer, better pieces
Blog weekly (for at least 3 months)
Take ballet classes
See the pyramids and cruise the Nile in a felucca
Find a way for Tuck to sit in a backhoe or excavator for a while and pretend to drive
Host a pop-up dinner party
Surprise B with a weekend trip
Found Flaimfest
Eat Bahn Mi in Vietnam
Knit a sweater
Crochet a hat
Learn to pitch
Develop visible abs
Find a cause, volunteer, make a difference
Eat at The French Laundry
Identify all the countries and their capitols on a map (per 9th grade geography)
Learn to make 10 great cocktails
Go on a trip with just Bridge, no kids or husbands!
Eat shave ice in Hawaii
Take my mom on a spa vacation
Go to a wedding in India (and wear a sari)
Write something for Lucky Peach
Throw 10 amazing parties
Get B, T & E all speaking French
Get the T&L chairs reupholstered
Manage a major renovation project
Go to a really fancy Fancy Dress ball in a fabulous period costume
Have a gallery show
Perfect the Julia Child wrist flip omelette technique
Start a cottage industry
Take a knife skills class
Bake and frost a cake
Take a painting class (oil or watercolor)
Own a house with perfect nooks and crannies
Go to Helsinki
Find a scale model staircase in an antique shop and buy it
Go to grad school (public health?)
Paint a room charcoal gray
Learn to play cello
Learn to play piano
Introduce Ellie to Betsy, Tacy & Tib
Go shopping in Istanbul
Wear more colors
Make cheese
Dance (competently) with Ben
Swim a solid number of laps (research how many that would be)
Go back to Argentina, and take a tango class
Charter a boat for a cruise in the Greek islands with our friends
Learn to sculpt
Know Paris, London, SF like I know NYC
Go to 10 art openings
Invent something brilliant
Live in France for at least a couple months
Start a business
Grow a beanpole teepee covered in vines
Further the cause of education around birth and pregnancy (midwives, etc.)
Figure out how to wear lipstick without looking crazy
Throw a huge party for our tenth anniversary (at the lake??)
Make a fort with the kids
Learn how to french braid (so that it actually looks ok)
Plant a garden and remember to water and weed
Grow lemons
Host 5 tasting parties (fruit, cheese, prosecco, chocolate, ??)
Take each kid on a solo trip (and have them do the same w B)
See the Mexican end of the monarch butterfly migration
Act in a play or sing in a choir again
Take the kids on volunteer trips to do community service (a la my Mexico trips in HS)
Speak conversational Italian
Throw an amazing birthday party
Spend summers in France or on the Lake
Figure out what I want to be when I grow up