THINGS I NEED TO DO

by Mariane Holbrook

I have some unfinished business.

I don’t sit and fret about how I can single-handedly bring peace to the mideast. I don’t stare at the phone, hoping I’ll get a call from the president asking me to replace Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. I don’t rush to my mailbox each day, looking for a letter from the Pulitzer Committee congratulating me on a newspaper column I wrote about eggplant.

But there are several important things I want to accomplish before I die. Admittedly, it won’t matter to anyone but me, unless of course I fail and my family is left to sponge up the splatter of my pathetic failure.

I want to stand on a cliff on the island of Cypress, leap off into 150 feet of sheer excitement on the end of a big rubber band, accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds with optional water touch. The water touch appeals to me. Unlike most sports, bungee jumping allows zero margin for error and if my rubber band breaks, I’d rather hit water than be spread-eagle on the hard tarmac, photographed in that unseemly, unladylike position for the front page of the Cypress News.  In color.

I want to ride a hot air balloon in Albuquerque, standing in the wicker basket, watching as the crew attaches the balloon to the basket, pulls it out of the bag and fills it with air. I want to see the burner lit to heat the inside of the balloon, bringing it gently to its feet. Then as we lift off to anywhere from 500 to 3,000 feet, I want to wave to my anxious husband, who knows I will either succumb to the fright of dizzying heights or from inhaling toxic fumes. Either way, I don’t stand a chance.

Before I depart this earth, I want to beat my sister in a game of scrabble. She is someone for whom every game is a mind-numbing duel to the death. This woman literally takes no prisoners. Most people refuse to play with her, their survival instincts forming a protective barrier around their need for sanity. She regularly scores about 400 points per game.

On one memorable play, she quickly and nonchalantly placed the word “quizzing” down in the lower left hand corner of the board which brought her 225 points. I, on the other hand, frowned, perspired, grimaced, studied and juggled my tiles for thirty minutes and finally come up with the word “life” which netted me six points. My sister and I obviously doggy-paddled in two completely separate gene pools. I think my mother adopted her from a bandana-wrapped gypsy who read "War And Peace" just for kicks.

Before I die, I want to take violin lessons and perform "The Kreutzer Sonata of Beethoven, 3rd Movement" at Lincoln Center in New York. I want to wear a sleek black gown, and be a guest violinist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. I want to invite Itzhak Perlman to play Bach’s Concerto for 2 Violins in D Minor with me, with all the social glitterati of New York gazing up at us in wonder and awe. But I wonder if I should first learn to read music, a simple concept which has always eluded me.

And finally, I want to learn to scuba dive. At one time, Jacques Cousteau trained to be a pilot but an accident damaged his arm, leaving him unable to fly so, not to be outdone, he invented scuba instead. WOW. Lucky for me!  And just in time, too. So, equipped with my Aeroskin dive suit (size 4 of course), my Zeagle’s analog diving instruments and my Fisher Metal Detector, I want to leap from a charter boat near the coast of Cozumel, that unique and splendid tourist attraction in Mexico.

I’ll confidently descend into the deep, float through a myriad of tunnels of sunken shipwrecks, retrieving enough gold coins and artifacts to pay for my hospitalization after I am dragged babbling and incoherent to the surface, scared senseless by my sudden remembrance that I’m a raging claustrophobic and I never even learned how to swim!

Hmmmm. Is basket-weaving hard?