Sometimes the Shackles Look Like a Grocery List

Remember the 2007 movie The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman? Two men facing terminal illness decide to experience the things they'd always wanted to do before dying.

Well, I had a bucket list too. The difference? I wasn't dying. I was young, curious, and busy living.

I travelled. I made love. I had children. I explored. I went back to school and reclaimed my education. Much of that living happened with children in tow.

Now, approaching sixty, I'm not making a bucket list because I'm running out of time. I'm extending the one I've already lived.

I Was a Child Performing Adulthood

I became a mother in my teens. I didn't have much time to sit around wondering who Carla might become. Pregnancy required action. Children needed feeding, clothing, housing, and raising. Employment mattered. Learning how to perform like an adult became a necessity.

I was still a child performing adulthood until I fell into it.

But I didn't stop living. I took my children on adventures, gave them the best life I could, and explored what the world had to offer alongside them.

My sons and my daughter did not experience the same mother. Her brothers were fourteen and seventeen years older, and by the time she arrived, I was a different woman living under different circumstances.

Her father was murdered before she turned six. She didn't really get the chance to know him, or us as we might have been together. Beginning again with her, without the support I needed, was a huge task. When epilepsy began and I changed careers, our resources changed dramatically.

Yet my academic journey exposed my daughter to people, ideas, and possibilities her brothers had not encountered in quite the same way. For better or worse, those experiences helped widen her world.

Children raised by the same mother don't necessarily grow up with the same version of that woman. We change, as do our resources, relationships, and circumstances.

The Price of Doing What You're Supposed to Do

I returned to school believing education would open doors. I still value learning. But I question the bargain we are sold about credentials.

My education left me with an unimaginable debt, one that may follow me until the day I die. Sometimes I wonder whether paying for an education means I won't be able to afford my own funeral.

And those certificates? Some days toilet paper seems more useful. At least you know what you're getting for your money.

That isn't a rejection of knowledge. It is a rejection of the assumption that qualifications necessarily improve a person's circumstances.

I devoted years to education, social justice, advocacy, and community, only to find myself pushed out of academia and watching people in communities I'd invested in distance themselves.

Black women are expected to survive, adapt, and carry on, often while being judged for choices made in circumstances others never had to navigate.

Perhaps I'd be wealthier had I cared less about social justice and more about capitalism. Perhaps not. There's no second life to test that possibility.

My certificates, disappointments, accomplishments, and debts are experiences. They do not define the entirety of Carla.

For years, I measured progress partly through responsibilities fulfilled, expectations met, and qualifications earned. But I've learned that none of those things determines my worth as a woman. I'm no longer interested in allowing institutions, credentials, or other people's judgments to decide what a successful life should look like.

Grandma Is a Relationship, Not My Identity

I love being a grandmother. My family loves me, too.

But mother, grandmother, and elder are descriptions of relationships and stages of life. For a child, Grandma makes it easy to know who's who. There's nothing wrong with that. The trouble begins when the designation becomes the whole identity of the woman.

My name is Carla.

My children are adults. My oldest granddaughter is an adult too and helps oversee her siblings. My role as head of the family isn't what it once was. They still contact me for advice, navigation, and other resources. Apparently, Grandma remains useful!

But I'm not required to organize everyone's daily life.

Everyone else is living theirs.

And I've only recently begun to recognize how much freedom there is in asking: What does Carla want?

The Great Grocery Store Liberation

I still wake early because decades of responsibility have ingrained the habit in me. But what happens afterward is increasingly my choice.

For years, shopping meant remembering everybody else's tastes. Don't buy Brussels sprouts because somebody doesn't like them. Remember what this child eats, what that one refuses, and what the whole household needs.

Even after those responsibilities changed, the shopping habits remained.

Going into a grocery store without shopping for a family was such a chain to break that I found another way. I ordered online, set myself an amount I could spend, and chose things that made me smile or made me hungry.

As far as being sensible? I let that go.

No children are watching me. I can have cookies for breakfast.

Some might say that's an unhealthy way to live, forgetting that I'm living. I'm living to please me.

And it isn't really about Brussels sprouts or cookies. It's the freedom to make an ordinary decision without first considering every other person's preferences.

Sometimes the shackles look like a grocery list.

Love Changes Shape, Too

My family loves me, and I love them. Our relationships are intact—not perfect, but growing and maturing as we do.

I'm a Libra, and I celebrate my birthday throughout the month of my sign. My family knows this, and they spoil me.

With sixty approaching, they kept asking what I wanted for my birthday. They believe sixty matters, and I'm with them.

So I sat down to make a list.

Would you believe it read like a grocery list?

I couldn't think of much that I needed, so groceries became part of their gifts. They're also buying me lunch and dinner on my birthday, and there's a party planned for the weekend.

I'm being spoiled, and I intend to enjoy it.

Our relationships are changing because we're all growing. Children become adults with their own decisions to make. Mothers rediscover the freedom to pursue interests that have nothing to do with motherhood. The love doesn't have to disappear when responsibilities shift.

Tradition is nice, but it isn't necessary. Being flexible enough to roll with life is a necessary ingredient.

They See Sixty. I See Possibilities.

Sometimes family members see an older woman and imagine that she's approaching the end of things. She may be close to death's door for all they know.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering what I might try next.

For the first time in my life, I don't have to build every decision around the needs of a family I am actively raising. That's why it feels like being released from a form of incarceration—not because my family was a prison, but because continuously setting aside my own preferences had become a way of life.

I'm taking nothing off the table.

I don't believe I wasted the years that came before. I was curious. I travelled, loved, had children, pursued learning, and lived the best life I could.

I simply never thought much about reaching sixty. I was busy living. And now that I'm here, there's no reason to assume the adventures have finished.

What Grandmother Wisdom Means to Me

Wisdom comes from a series of experiences. Those experiences don't necessarily define the woman.

We can be caregivers without being caregivers every minute. We can be proud of our children without claiming their lives as our own. We can love tradition without surrendering our freedom to change.

I succeeded in raising my children to adulthood. Now I am learning to give myself attention without having to justify it through what I provide for others.

What does Carla want? What would she like to try?

I'm still applying those questions to other parts of my life. I don't have to know every answer.

When I was younger, I lived my bucket list because I was curious. Now I'm extending it because I am still curious.

I'm taking off the shackles and celebrating sixty.

My bucket list now is easy.

Love. Hugs. Happiness.

Everything else? I'm taking nothing off the table.

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