“All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
As my husband read those lines and closed the pages of C.S. Lewis’s book The Last Battle, I sniffed back a tear and rubbed my cheek against the top of my daughter’s head. All three girls snuggled with us a little longer, holding onto the hush before hustling off to bed. With the end of that book, the last in The Chronicles of Narnia series, we closed several years of family read-alouds. Between listening to my husband’s unique vocal cadences and tossing around thoughts in response to the questions from the companion guide, Roar, we had developed a comfortable routine that stayed with us through all seven books and across seasons and miles of road trips and family nights. Who would we be now without Aslan and Narnia?
Even so, we tucked our kids in bed that night with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. We did it! We reached our family goal of reading together through all the Chronicles, from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe through The Last Battle. We had the bittersweet victory of checking that one off of our family bucket list! And we had all been changed and defined by the experience.
While individual bucket lists reflect each family member and reveal new pieces of his or her identity, the act of sharing those lists creates a new identity for our family. And more importantly, the family bucket list we create together reflects a new identity we are moving toward.
As we try fresh ventures and visit unfamiliar places, chances are we will discover some things worth repeating. We may establish a new family vacation spot we return to each year. We may take up a different family pastime. We may journey long and slow toward a larger goal that spans years and miles and shapes our daily routines. These adventures become part of our family’s identity.
Recognizing what we want to see and do with our children while they still reside in our homes draws out our hopes for what family means to us. It encourages us to express what we want our family life to look like. We receive the opportunity to clarify aspects of our family identity as we list out who we want to be together.
The bonus? Because of the active nature of bucket list living, we will actually become who we declared we want to be. We will seek out ways to do and be what others often only think of doing and being. That identity we desire will travel from page to life.
While our family has closed the book on The Chronicles of Narnia, our own story is far from over. Our girls will always reminisce with a bit of joy and tenderness over those years spent listening to Dad read Lewis’s tales. But that shared experience and the rich symbolism from those stories travel with all of us into each new adventure we undertake. We remain defined by the Narnia years and the things we learned together from those pages. And that’s worth so much more than a mere check mark on a list of things to achieve.
