Just for kicks

-- Take my boat to the Great Lakes.

-- Rent an RV and take my family on a cross-country trip with no timeline.

-- Build my own home.

-- Have my dream workshop.

-- Buy a small marina.

-- Throw the opening pitch at a Red Sox game.

-- Learn to stick to a diet.

-- Swim with dolphins.

-- Learn to play the piano.

-- Take tap-dancing lessons.

Azita Bina-Seibel Co-owner of Bina Osteria, Lala Rokh, and Bin 26 Enoteca

-- Drive cross-country with my son.

-- Travel all of Far eEast Asia.

-- Sail the Mediterranean Sea.

-- Live in a borderless world.

Gregory Maguire Author of novels, including Wicked and A Lion Among Men

-- Clear out my e-mail in-box. But maybe that is like ”evacuating air from my lungs,” a condition of death itself, so strike that one.

-- I have been lucky enough to travel widely, but special destinations I still would like to reach include many parts of India, and Kyoto, Japan, and New Zealand.

-- Having derived so much pleasure from watching Wicked on Broadway and around the world and having learned a great deal about how a piece changes daily, depending on the cast and the audience, I would love to try my hand at writing for the stage someday.

-- I would like to attend a Roman Catholic Mass celebrated, with full canonical approval, by a woman priest or a married priest or perhaps a woman priest married to another woman. (Why not go for broke in this question of unlikely dreams?)

-- I would like to finish reading Proust. Since I’m about halfway there, I hurry to add I don’t insist on dying immediately upon finishing it.

-- With the finest champagne or the rawest home-fermented Vimto, I would like to toast the New Year in which global carbon emissions had gone down from the previous year.

-- I would like to see Andy’s and my grade-school children through the hormonal hurricanes and peer high-pressure systems and teenage tsunamis and landed safely upon the shores of adulthood.

Carole Charnow General director, Opera Boston

-- Shake Nelson Mandela’s hand.

-- Travel to India, Tibet, and Machu Picchu.

-- Play a hockey game with two my sons.

-- Own a house on the beach with an outdoor shower.

-- Take my dad to Jerusalem.

-- Drink a $1,000 bottle of wine.

-- Sing in the chorus of La Scala.

-- Live on a houseboat.

-- Climb Mount Masada and swim in the Dead Sea with my husband, Clive.

-- Be the assistant director to Peter Brook, the world’s greatest stage director.

-- Meet Barack Obama.

Roger Cook Landscape contractor, This Old House

-- Catch a fish that weighs more than I do.

-- See the giant redwood trees.

-- Visit Monet’s garden.

-- Jump out of an airplane.

-- Go on a family vacation with no timetable.

-- Travel through Costa Rica.

-- Leave my family happy and successful.

-- Spend a day with Barack Obama.

-- Hit a baseball over the Green Monster -- maybe even just off it would be good enough.

Mary-Catherine Deibel Co-owner, UpStairs on the Square

-- Enroll in a French immersion class for three months, preferably in Paris or Provence, and end up with total fluency!

-- Spend an entire summer at our little cottage in Westport and cultivate a good garden.

-- Go for an entire month to the Caribbean resort of CuisinArt on the island of Anguilla, where I would get perfectly tan, have lovely looking people spritz me on the beach with Evian water, and take side trips to St. Barts.

-- Take up cello lessons again and get good enough to play a final pre-death concert with a community orchestra.

-- Spend the winter in Palm Beach, playing croquet every day until I finally get better at strategy and split shots.

-- Find a way to pay off the student loans of my nieces, nephews, and godchildren

-- Find a suitable new wife for my husband, Reid.