#Chasing50: The Bucket List by Mark Anthony Neal

#Chasing50: The Bucket List
by Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
“My bucket-list?” I repeated to the 13-year-old She in response to her query, inspired by some car-talk with her mother the day before.  Before I could answer (and not that I had an answer readily available) her mother--my wife of 24-years--chimed in, “daddy doesn’t need a bucket list--he does whatever he wants.”  
Shade acknowledged, there’s some truth to my wife’s claim; I’ve largely been able to do what I wanted…professionally; I live to climb into my head, and have managed to choose a career that allows me to do so--and importantly, still support a family.
Truth be that the very concept of a bucket-list is some esoteric shit to me, as one might expect being of a generation of Black Men, who real or imagined, never thought we’d reach the age of 21. Cornbread and Edmund Perry, where born of the same myth and reality; Tamir never had the chance to dream of one.
That me and the first generation bestie Frank Jr.--working class kids, who had parochial school educations, two-parent households, and access to one of the best public high schools in New York City, approached our everyday lives with a trepidation born out the the randomness of it all, is the needle drop that ordered our lives and our imaginations.  It’s hard to dream--even of the way to get out--if it seems you’re always running for your life, real or imagined. (remember that day in 8th grade, on Fulton avenue Frank Jr?).
My 21st birthday remains a blur; I track time through my emotions, not necessarily by what I’ve done or achieved.  I don’t remember my 21st birthday, because I had no idea how to feel about something that was tied up in so much ambivalence and anxiety, real or imagined.
A bucket-list? That I’m alive on the eve of my 50th Birthday and can be asked that question.