1- Get better at reading maps
2- Learn to make dollhouse furniture (1:2 scale!)
3- Spend six months living by a beach and finally come to grips with sand. It’s not that scary! It’s just tiny rocks!
4- Stop saying sorry when what I really mean is “why did you do that?”
5- Inversely, stop furiously defending myself when what I know I should be saying is “sorry.”
6- I’ve always secretly thought I had it in me to be a very gifted synchronized swimmer. What is so hard on land… may be easy in water?
7- Once I am a passable synchronized swimmer, I’d like to do a couple shifts as the (first!?) fat Weeki Wachee mermaid.
8- Get a degree in forensic nursing. I read this incredible book last year, which goes into depth on how the lack of skilled forensic nurses has contributed to an alarming backlog of rape kits (as well as the appalling treatment that is often given in the immediate aftermath of an assault.) I became obsessed with these statistics and started looking at online programs. While I probably won’t become a full time forensic nurse (these heroes spend a lot of time on their feet!) an in depth understanding the process would allow one to be of better service in enacting change! The prerequisites are a BSN in nursing, a 3.0 GPA in said program and an unencumbered RN license. My father said that he doesn’t see this happening- maybe he’s practicing reverse psychology, since he’s all too aware that I could lift a car purely on the fumes of male doubt. Just give me twenty years…
9- In that vein, I want to gain a deeper understanding of exactly how the medical system is failing chronically ill and disabled women. My perspective as an eternal patient has afforded me some insight, but it will always be limited by the reality that I’ve been able to go outside of network to access specialized care, that I have a “network” at all. We each have an issue that we feel called to engage deeply on, a place where we see a great shift needs to happen, and mine is the intersection between trauma, illness and addiction in women and queer people. Now I want to understand how these care gaps are widened by socioeconomic status, race and gender identity (am always reading up on this, plz drop any recs in the comments!)
10- Take the overnight train to Montreal with my father. We’ve been talking about this since I was nine. I don’t even think we’d even have fun- he’s gonna get in a mood, I’m gonna get in a mood about his mood- but neither of us has that much fun having fun anyway.
11. Attend a party that doesn’t really get going until well after midnight. Dance sober until 9am and then go out for pancakes.
12. Direct a pop video. Not indie pop (though that sounds cool too!) We’re talking capital P pop, Dave Meyers style.
13. Organize my closet so it’s like a boutique and every time I walk in and think “the buyer here really knows her shit, and the merchandising is excellent. I want it all!”
Once the closet is ready for customers (me! You, if you need to borrow something for a destination wedding!) finally catalogue it all on Indyx.
14. Design a line of ornate, gilded, impossibly fun rings for chubby fingers.
15. Write and watercolor a children’s book, in the spirit of…
16. Get my colors done.
17. Write in new genres: a piece of long form reporting, a romance novel, a crime drama!
18. Company retreat at this Cornish castle.
19. Interview all my exes but, once they’re in front of me and have emotionally prepped, not ask them a single question about me or our relationship. “Okay. Here we are. Let’s finally get into it… What was the first thing…”
Gulp.
“…you used to do when you got home from school?”
20. Do a silent retreat. It just feels like something you must try so that you can really commit to talking once and for all.
21. Finally embrace and integrate my shadow self in the form of tween Lena, because I cannot bear being a forty year old who starts sentences with “look, I didn’t have a lot of friends in middle school.” Like, I really am out here talking about how hard it was to switch schools in seventh grade. Unacceptable!
22. See a baby be born.
23. Find the right way to use all the stories and imagery and quotes I have obsessively collected from and about my parents and turn it into a document of merit.
24. Past life regression. Period.
25. Have at least one lucid dream where the choice I make is not “kiss the nearest stranger.”
26. Rip a man in a position of power a new one. Do it in a calm and controlled way, saying exactly what I would be wishing I’d said in two hours if I’d just sat there and stewed. But do it on behalf of someone who isn’t ready to do it for herself, because what the fuck else is the point of turning forty?
27. Collect first editions of all of my favorite childhood novels and reread them aloud to my husband before bed, because he wasn’t really read to as a child and we need to amend that.
28. Scan and organize all of my grandma Gram’s photos, letters and ephemera, to create a cohesive narrative of her life before she got married at 34 (there *were* affairs with married men- she confessed while we were watching The Thorn Birds!)
29. Have this exact hair style.
30. Design a living space that actually allows my particular disabled body to move with ease- higher chairs and couches so I don’t have to lower and raise but can simply slide and roll, sturdy banisters and wide stairs with good traction built at a less vertiginous angle, a shower with a marble seat that is carved in the exact shape of my ass, like a well worn saddle. A girl can dream!
31. Solve a cold case.
32. Locate these vintage holy grails in sizes not meant for a baby mouse:
33. Get my Spanish into a zone that could accurately be described as conversational. Here’s what I’ve got so far: Mi esposo es Peruano! Mi esposo es mi profesor de Español!
34. Knit regularly and not just when there’s a pandemic or a writer’s strike. The truth and the light is in this knitting store on Camden Passage- every woman in there has what I want.
Note to self: you don’t have to get very good, you just have to keep going until you can make a thneed.
35. Meet Moo Deng, because I have not forgotten her even if her child stardom is over. Sorry she grew breasts and got sick of your shit. This youth economy is so fucked:(
36. Fulfill childhood dream of sleeping in: a capsule hotel, an ice hotel, a nest in the bathtub.
37. Meet aging with curiosity. Tell stories about that.
38. Make an edible meal and serve it to my shocked family.
39. Teach a writing class, like these heroes taught me.
40. Let. It. Go.
Thank you, truly, for helping me to live so many more than forty before 40…
TBC…
xxL
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.