Monday Morning Musing: New Year, Same Old Me

Last week I took some time to go through and clear photos from my phone. Having a new grandchild means I have a LOT more photos! I scrolled back to the auspicious year that was 2020 to begin to sort and found myself time traveling through the past three years. Suddenly, I felt a kind of bittersweetness of spirit. There are friends I miss because we've moved or they've moved or they've died. There's no way to sugarcoat that. There were photos of dreams that began and eventually also died or are struggling now. There were a LOT of photos of our meals at home together because my beloved and I like to sit down to dinner and light candles and he is an excellent chef. Even those made me a little sad.

The end of a year, or the end of anything, elicits a mash up of emotions, at least for me. I've stopped feeling any pressure to make resolutions or start an exercise routine, but I do try to reflect on what has been and put into words what I hope for in the year to come. I'm not quite there yet, but I've also given up on setting a deadline for those sorts of things.

Naomi Shihab Nye writes beautifully of these endings and beginnings. (Plus her last name is literally NYE). Happy New Year, beloveds.

Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.