Remember that song? We sang it as kids … Billy and Susie sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G … First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage.
I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be an insult if your name was put into that song … Stephanie and Brad (the most popular boy in my ninth grade class) sitting in a tree. Well, I didn’t think it was an insult. I thought it was a life plan—well, maybe not the kissing in the tree part. I never was good at climbing trees—but the rest of it. And that’s pretty much what I did. The day after high school graduation, I set my plan into motion.
And as unbelievable as it sounds, it’s just now occurring to me; it was only half a plan!
Once you have kids, your future planning turns into their future planning and the days, weeks, months, and even years are coming at you so fast there isn’t a lot of time to consider that it may not always be that way. Looking back, you wonder how you survived! This is what I was remembering when the realization came to me … AGAIN … that the kids were not coming back home.
What do you do when your end plan is raising kids and then it’s done? I’ve been trying to come up with something profound. Something meaningful. A little less of “What do I want to be when I grow up?” and a little more of “If these are my last days on Earth, how do I want to spend them and what do I want to do?” I even put a question prompt on the refrigerator—WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Boy, oh boy, did that drive my husband crazy! In all fairness to him, I asked him that very question, knowing I wasn’t confident with my own answer. So, I tried to add some clarity. “What do you want … now and in the future?” To which he answered, “To stop answering your questions.”
Touché.
But seriously, taking away the things you would ask a genie if you found a magic lamp—winning the lottery, perfect health, world peace—we came up with some surprisingly simple things.
At the top of the list: Getting a good night’s sleep. When did that become a thing? And have you noticed the more you TRY to sleep, the worse you sleep?! For several Christmases in a row, I’ve given my husband curated “sleep kits” with lavender oils, silky pillow covers, and most recently, a noise machine with 40 sound choices from beach breezes to mountain winds and every chirping bird in between. None of these sounds worked.
Then, after an overly expensive evening out to dinner (which, incidentally, we were both still hungry after), we talked about how nice it would be to have a meal out at a restaurant that was better than we could make at home ourselves!
Today, the screensaver on my computer popped up with a hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower. My mom and her husband have something like fifty hummingbird feeders at their house in Utah. I look forward to seeing them when I visit. We can spend hours watching those tiny creatures hovering, seemingly motionless while sipping the sugared water, and then they’re off at lightning speed.
A friend once said that hummingbirds are busy getting the most out of life.
I think I’d like that … spending my future busy getting the most out of life.