Fair-ness

I'm not a "Bucket List" guy.

I know lots of cancer patients -- and plenty of non-cancer patients -- who keep a Bucket List of things they want to do before they die. (The term comes from the phrase "Kick the Bucket.") Maybe my distaste comes from the fact that the movie Bucket List was playing in theaters when I was diagnosed. Whatever the case, I'm just not a Bucket List guy. At least not the way it's often defined, as a list of Big Moments -- skydiving, seeing the Eiffel Tower, going to a World Series game. Stuff like that.

I think I don't like the idea of having pressure put on me that way, like my life wasn't complete because I didn't dance the tango in Argentina. I'm too busy to worry about those things. So instead of having the Big Moments Bucket List, I look for opportunities as they present themselves.  Nothing earth-shattering, necessarily. But there are experiences that come along that make you think, "Wouldn't it be cool if--?" Those are the experiences I'd rather collect.

And this week, I had such a small, cool experience.

I'll save you the suspense and skip the build-up: My plum tomatoes won a first prize blue ribbon at a country fair. And my Big Boy tomatoes won second prize in the "green tomatoes" category. Here are the pictures:




Gorgeous, aren't they?

I'd thought about doing something like this for years, since we went to a different country fair and I saw the vegetable exhibits, and thought, "My stuff is as good as that. Wouldn't it be cool if I won a ribbon for something I grew?"

And now, years later, I've done it. I saw an ad for the fair about two months ago, and looked at their premium book, and saw all of the cool categories -- veggies and fruits, canned produce and pickles, pies and cakes. At that point, my garden was just starting to burst out, and by mid-August, when it was time to enter, I figured my plum tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplant would be at their peak come fair time, so I entered them. And I figured I'd have some green tomatoes somewhere in the garden, so I entered them, too. Unfortunately, when I went to pick things earlier in the week, my cukes were about spent, and the best eggplant I could find was a small, anemic, pale purple one. Three weeks earlier and I'd have swept my categories. I'm sure of it.

But I'm happy with my tomatoes. And now, with my blue ribbon, I can say that I am an Award-Winning Gardener. On the drive home from the fair, I formulated great plans to start a new blog, write books, maybe host a radio show, all highlighted with the phrase "Award-Winning Gardener." I can hear it now: "Next up on NPR, Lympho Tomato Bob. This week, Bob talks about how to make green tomato relish with those last few tomatoes lingering on the vine."

So I can cross something off my non-Bucket List. Another experience that made me think "Wouldn't it be cool if--?"

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Because winning those ribbons was pretty cool. And, trust me, I'll be bragging about it for years.

But, as my wife reminded me the other night, the cool experience, the thing to cross off, wasn't my winning. It was my daughter's.

When I got the premium book weeks ago, I looked through all those cool categories. But then I got to the Junior section, for kids under 16. The same baking and gardening categories, but also sections for arts and crafts and hobbies. I showed it to my 11 year old daughter, who got very excited.

And a little nervous.

She's our artist -- sculpting her own American Girl Doll accessories, drawing and sketching whenever she finds a blank piece of paper. She'd love to be an art teacher some day.

So while the idea of entering an art contest was exciting, it was also a little nerve-inducing. What 11 year old girl wants to be judged? But she bucked up and decided to enter three categories: sketching, clay sculpture, and cupcake decorating.

She was nervous on Tuesday when we dropped off her art projects -- a pencil sketch of SpongeBob SquarePants and a clay sculpture of Fred Flintstone watching TV (both of which she created from memory, not from models of any kind that she had in front of her, like pictures of the subjects). She was a little less nervous on Wednesday when she turned in her cupcakes: rubber ducks in candy-pearl bubbles (with a Pez candy as a bar of soap).

And she did great: second prize ribbons for both her sketch and her sculpture, and a third prize for her cupcakes:



(The third place for the cupcakes is a travesty. Her creativity blew everyone else out of the water, so to speak. Everything was edible, including the candy clay ducks. She deserved a higher prize....but I'm biased.....)

But, really, the important part of this whole experience was that she had the courage to do it. She'll be judged for the rest of her life, by lots of people, for lots of things. And this time she had the courage to face that head on.

As much as I wanted a ribbon of my own, I really wanted my daughter to get one -- or three. As she and I waited in line Tuesday night to turn in her art projects, I looked at the clouds about to break, tried to shut out the people in front of me talking about some nonsense, I texted to my wife, "Long line. Ugh." She texted back, "You're a good dad." I kissed my daughter on the head and tried to think more about why all of this might be important to her.

For 20 years, my wife has been the one who has kept me grounded, reminded me of what matters, and kept my priorities straight.

Of all the things on any list of experiences that I might come across, that make me think, "Wouldn't it be cool if--?", it's the ones that make my kids into better people that are probably most important.