Who else can I still be....

I keep wanting to try poetry on one of these Sunday Scribblings, but my brain just isn't cooperating. The closest I managed this time resulted from my thinking just how many of my goals I have actually reached in this life. I ended up with a couple of lines from Frank Sinatra's "That's Life."
"I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.
I've been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing:
Each time I find myself, flat on my face, I just pick myself up
And get back in the race."
I haven't been all those things he mentions, but I don't think those are really things I have wanted to be. However, all in all, that's a terrific philosophy of life. We all have been a few things (like a pauper and probably a puppet) that we really wouldn't have chosen to be....but the truth is, it's hard to properly appreciate the "ups" in our life if there aren't "downs" to create contrast. Yet, through it all, we learn and benefit most if we just "pick [ourselves] up and get back in the race."

Please feel free to skip this next paragraph, because now that I have written it out it seems offensively saccharine and immodest; but I needed to list goals reached in order to arrive at what else I would still like to be and do.

Dreams reached---Roles held:
I am a wife and a mother and a Christian. These perhaps have enriched me most. I was a loving and I believe good daughter and sibling. I have had at least five deep, long, true friendships and those are treasures beyond price. I have had a long and fulfilling career. I have been, on a limited scale, a musical and theatrical performer. I've learned to play the piano (after I was an adult), although I never reached the level of success at it that I'd hoped for. I have drawn true delight and enlightenment from travel abroad, a dream of my girlhood, because I loved Mother's fabulous stories of her one trip to Paris. This was a dream I had almost given up hope of ever realizing when an unexpected window opened for me and I was able to go not once but about 11 times, taking students and sharing the experience with them. I have touched the lives of young people, predominantly, I pray, in a positive way; have shared my knowledge, my love of and enthusiasm for literature, music and theater, and, I believe, in some way have shared my faith, as well. In many areas I have had the good fortune to be appreciated; and, realizing how great that feels, I've tried to make others feel loved and appreciated too.
As I review the goals of my life that I have reached, I am awed by how blessed my life has been. And, I fear I am probably naseauating with my litany those of you kind enough to read this post.


If you skipped, you can start again here:
What else can I still be??

There aren't a lot of goals I still have on my list, and they sound quite selfish and not specifically noble and humanitarian, like I think was intended by the prompt of the week.
1. I'd like to see my child(ren)happily married.
2. I want to share Europe with my husband and help us both stay healthy enough to enjoy our retirement years.
3. Because of my love of reading and sharing literature with others, I'd like to pick up retirement spending money by reading "books on tape."

What else will I still be? I guess I really can say, "The Lord only knows."

Because I am really not very proud of this as a writing, I think I shan't post it to Sunday Scribblings. But, because I made a commitment to myself to write something every week for the SS prompt; because I worked hard on it, and find it, in a way, deeply satisfying; and because this is, after all, MY Blog, I shall leave it here at my published blogspot for anyone who wants to come and find it.