life

Another New Year’s Eve. Another invitation to think about goals, beginnings, resolutions. Another moment when many of us try to distance ourselves from the past, to escape what didn’t go as planned and lean toward an imagined future.

But this year, the past didn’t cooperate. It arrived uninvited. No easy escape. No clean line forward.

When I try to recall past New Year’s Eves, I’m struck by how few come with fondness or nostalgia. I question why. My life has not been especially difficult. I was raised by solid, lower-middle-class parents who believed deeply in Christian values and tried to live them. I was encouraged to play sports, to study music, to read and write, to get an education because my parents hadn’t had that chance. They expected me to do what was right, not because it was easy, but because it mattered. They were shaped by the beliefs and blind spots of their time, as we all are, but they worked earnestly toward their version of goodness.

Perhaps I told myself a simpler story than the truth.

I have hazy memories. Fireworks from a sidewalk. Dick Clark on television. Parents asleep by ten. A curfew in high school. A boyfriend who left for after-parties once I had to be home. Marriage. Small children. Did we celebrate together? I don’t know. I can’t remember.

One night stands out. I was in my mid-thirties, before Kristy died. We bought fireworks, drove to her house, sat on the back of her dad’s truck, and took turns lighting them in the street. The boys were young. Happy. I don’t remember what we talked about. Knowing us, it was men, sports, school. What stays is the feeling. That the night happened. That she was my friend. That I was hers.

At that point in my life, I was working myself thin. Teaching high school math for little pay. Sponsoring student council without compensation. Saying yes too often. Carrying institutional weight because I could. Because I didn’t yet know how to say no. I marvel now at the energy I had then. I would protect it fiercely today.

Other years blur together. Relationships where anxiety outweighed joy. Nights marked more by worry than celebration. After loss, there were years of escape. Then marriage again. Then sourness. Then distance. Okinawa brought friendship and laughter and a sense of shared life, though even those memories feel dreamlike. Later still, New Year’s Eves with my children and grandchildren. Those were the best. In those moments, I felt settled. And still, I failed to hold on to the details.

I wish I had catalogued more. Conversations. Exact words. Instead, I retained only the feeling. But those feelings do matter.

Perhaps this night has always been less about the calendar and more about me. It has taken me nearly sixty years to truly inhabit this skin and almost like the person living in it. Many people would never guess at the struggle. I learned early how to deflect, smile, redirect. I came to Italy with hope. I’ve had beautiful experiences here. I’ve also been tested in ways that dimmed that hope and fractured something in me. There was darkness. A period when I didn’t recognize myself.

I still don’t fully recognize the face or body I see now, but I like her. The feeling this New Year’s Eve is unresolved. Still forming.

Maybe it’s freedom.
Maybe acceptance.
Curiosity, certainly.
And yes, still a little hope.

Don’t Hesitate by Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,

don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty

of lives and whole towns destroyed or about

to be. We are not wise, and not very often

kind. And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this

is its way of fighting back, that sometimes

something happens better than all the riches

or power in the world. It could be anything,

but very likely you notice it in the instant

when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the

case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid

of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

I learned yesterday of an acquaintance, a friend really, placed on hospice. Thoughts of his imminent departure joined the already crowded musings in my overcrowded mind of life, death, love, duty, joy, family, failures, the undone, loss, goodbyes, sadness. Ah, the mind of a 50-something! Americans as a whole tend to view death in unhealthy ways-I get it. Goodbyes are the worst. I struggle at the airport each summer, each Christmas. The death of each relationship has gutted me, even the unhealthy ones. I’ve always hated the American funeral; I’d prefer a concert of my favorite songs, a performing comedian roasting my life, friends telling exes what jackasses they were to lose me! my personal poetry writings read aloud for all to suffer through, my belongings donated to someone, anyone who’d appreciate the painting by Chou, the deaf mute from Taiwan, or the Japanese tea set I once gifted my mother, or the hundreds of books- some I never got around to reading and some I read countless times for the passages that moved my heart. My dear mother lingers on hospice care, stuck somewhere in time- happy moments of the past visiting her I do hope- while those hands who tend her belong to those who do not know who she was.

“There was someone I loved who grew old and ill

One by one I watched the fires go out.

There was nothing I could do

except to remember

that we receive

then we give back.” – At the River Clarion by Oliver.

But she will pass on… as will I… as will you… as is my friend. We oft receive, and then we give back. My mother loved big, she found joy in the small and insignificant, she found herself in the beautiful flowers she grew. What a life. This post may read maudlin to you, BUT IT’S NOT. Of late, poet Mary Oliver’s words resonate with me more than any I’ve read, and in thinking of the leaving of this life, I turned to her once more. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world. There’s joy to be found. I miss so many who were dear to me, my Stanley, my Boomer (yes, pets), my Kristy, my dad- yes, my mother even now. but laughter, beauty, love still await me. The world waits for us to notice. And to my friend, what possibility awaits you. May you be filled with a sense of who you were, who you are, as you transition. Man, to find joy in each tender moment is a gift.

“And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,”

– When Death Comes by Oliver

I struggle some days. Others, I push myself outside to the quiet spaces, to listen to the trees, the birds, feel the wind, gaze longingly over the ocean. I text my son, my sister, my friend. I make plans.

Here is my reminder to find joy.

“Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.”

Thanks for reading my TedTalk