No Promises, No Regrets

I recently returned from a vacation with my husband. It is an annual event and my absolute favorite week of the year. He and I go to New York City every August to watch Round 1 of the US Open Tennis Tournament. The other 3 days we catch shows, sight see, shop, relax, whatever we want to do.

It is just the two of us. No responsibilities. No pressures. No timetables (or not much anyway). And no one that we know. Billy has become very guarded with this week. It is our week. Even though I've had friends also travel to the Open and we know people who live in Manhattan he doesn't want to see any of them.

And that's OK. We need our time to be Deanne and Billy - no one's son or daughter or mom or dad or sister or brother. Just us.

The funny thing is, whenever I tell people where we're going I'm always asked if I play tennis. No one ever asked me that when I went to watch a football game, or a golf tournament, or a baseball game. Up until last summer I always said No. Even now it is a hesitant "I play AT tennis".

But people always seem amazed.

I'm not really sure why it matters. Don't all sports need spectators? Don't we all have different roles to play - some are athletes, some are fans? I've watched major tennis tournaments (on television) since I was in high school - even had the opportunity to go to Wimbledon in 1984 but 18 year olds don't always make good decisions - and my family used to go to the Dallas Cowboy game for Thanksgiving. I lived in Kansas City and attended many Royals baseball games. Sports are a big part of my life.

What tends to really bumfuzzle people, I think, is the lengths to which we will go to attend some of these events. For our 7th or 8th anniversary I gave Billy tickets to see Florida State play Miami. We lived in Kansas City at the time. I next wanted him to see Florida State play Florida. That entailed purchasing season tickets. So we did. Kept them for several years. Oddly enough when we moved back down South and technically closer to Florida it became more difficult to get away for the weekends so we had to give them up. But we had a lot of fun sitting in Doak Campbell Stadium.

I never really thought it was unusual. If you want to do something, do it.

Like most people, I have a "Bucket List". My objective, though, is to be steadily scratching stuff off BEFORE I reach an absolute point of Now or Never.

Because, technically, aren't we always at a point of Now or Never? We don't come with expiration dates stamped on our feet. There is no crystal ball that shows us the date of our final day.

There are no promises of a tomorrow. And, while some people fall ill and have some forewarning that they need to get busy on their List, a lot of people don't. Things just happen.

I have a couple of pictures from 2001 that I cherish. Both were taken in the courtyard of the World Trade Center complex. One is a shot straight up of the Twin Towers and the other is Billy and me standing in front of the globe with the fountain in the background. Less than 2 weeks later none of that was there anymore. The globe survived but was damaged and moved. I have a picture of that as well. The terrorist could have just as easily struck on the day I was there. The sky was just as blue and clear. There was nothing significantly different - but we were lucky. It was not our day.

No matter how I leave this world, or when, I want to have as few regrets as possible. I don't want to look at my List and think about all that I could have done if I had just taken the time.

Some people don't "get" that. They think you should wait until you retire to travel, or you should save the money rather than spend it on a trip, or a piece of art or whatever it is that you want. I say we may not have time to wait. We may not be around to spend the money we saved.

Anything is possible.

No promises, no regrets.