Originally published on January 25, 2016. I’m re-publishing posts I’d had on this blog that, due to some glitch of the internet, got scrubbed. No editing has been done.

I was 16 when I made my bucket list. I was young, excited, and giddy about the edge of life I was perched upon. Old enough to know what the world could show me and young enough to understand none of it. My bucket list includes once-in-a-lifetime events, idle fancies, small moments, and big ambitions (apparently I plan to learn at least 4 languages).

Which is probably why my list includes the following:

• Have a summer fling
• Have a New Year’s Kiss
• Kiss in the rain
• Say “I love you” to a man and mean it

Some bucket list experiences warrant full blog posts… but these four can be a package deal. They each came from the same underlying desire I had at 16: to be romantic, dramatic, and full of life.

I had never had a serious boyfriend, and I didn’t know what form romance would take in my life. Would it be serious and intense? Fun and carefree? Passionate and sweeping? I had no clue.
What I did know was Noah and Allie kissing in the rain. Ross and Rachel. Harry and Sally. Ryan and Marissa kissing at the last second on New Year’s Eve.

So I went with those moments.

It’s probably telling on several levels that I would tick off all these experiences before I was 19.

My summer fling was a handsome tall German boy who stayed with a friend in Seattle for the summer. I taught him our constellations and took him to his first baseball game. He taught me German, and I learned how fast I could drive across town to beat curfew late on warm Seattle highways.* We filled long weeks with adventure, and he went home to Germany. He was, and probably still is, wonderful. Check.

The next two – the New Year’s kiss and kissing in the rain – were my most cinematic ambitions that became my least memorable bucket list moments. They happened for the first time… and that was it. Turns out kissing in the rain is just kissing with fogged up glasses. And I’ve had my share of New Year’s kisses since the first: some have been lovely, and others can only be qualifed as trainwrecks. You live, you learn. Check.

But I remember my first “I love you” perfectly.

We were at a jungle-themed high school dance. I was wearing a cheetah print tank top, and he was in full safari gear, at my insistence. He was dancing, which he never did. Suddenly he walked into the shadows and re-emerged dragging one of our other friends onto the floor. A friend who was and is many wonderful things, but never a “dance” person. He pulled them off the wall and into the middle of our group, both of them releasing the vice grip that is high school self-consciousness, just for a song.

The gesture was small. It was recognition of a shared social discomfort, and compassion. I don’t know if anyone else noticed. But I cracked. I reached across the dance circle, grabbed him, and whispered “I love you,” and meant it. While wearing cheetah print and gold eyeshadow.

What have I learned from these bucket list moments, now that they’re all behind me? Real romance isn’t big, and it’s not achieved via checklist.

I’ve learned that the bad moments are as important as the good ones. I couldn’t have known then that the mistakes, regrets, and fights would make me a better person than kissing in the rain ever did.

There have been countless “romantic” moments I couldn’t have predicted because the best parts of love aren’t in the 10 second countdown to New Year’s.

Love is small, detailed, and weird.

Love is drinking Kentucky beer under a Daniel Boone sky. Clair de Lune. Cribbage in mountain cabins. Horizon gazing upside down from Colorado boulders. Skating on forgotten ponds under Mississippi bluffs. Sunrises over Lake Michigan. Cheetah print tank tops.

These are the unexpected moments that don’t fit on a list because at 16, I only knew romantic moments could look like; I had no idea how they would make me feel. Romance is rarely about drama: it’s really about calm. I felt calm and whole in these memories. I was in the right place at the right time, even if that time has now passed.

***

I started this blog thinking I’d write about my bucket list and my quest to cross off new experiences. But as I write every week, I’m realizing that life’s most powerful moments are happening around my list, not in it. Another, far more Yiddish way to put it would be, Man plans and God laughs.

I’m up to more than 80 items on my bucket list – and it will keep growing. But as for cinematic kisses, countdowns, and love? Check, check, and check.

* 12 minutes.