Write the New Year
I poured myself a cup of coffee this morning and then proceeded to sit here without taking a single drink prior to its getting cold because I forgot I had done it.
I sit here within the yearly mess that fleetingly makes one wonder why putting up Christmas decorations is worth it. I got most of them down yesterday, including the tree and now my living room looks as if it forgot to put on its pants. Something is missing. As I was taking down all the precious trinkets and carefully packaging them to survive another hot Texas summer in the attic (and a potential move to a new home), I pondered why the memories don't flood the same way they do when I am putting them up. I find taking it all down so blue and hazy, like a cold gray day that needs to be muscled through. I guess I don't like packaging things away. Its done on the faith that next year will be the same happy unpacking as it was this year and preparing everything for that once-a-year moment. I could not help the line of thought that made me wonder where we all will be this time next year. So much can change in a year, and that sensation has lingered in me through to this morning. I found myself turning to Joe in bed last night professing undying love in a half asleep state, curling into him as if his body itself could absorb me. I thought of my Nick, off at a winter camp with the Scouts, and fretting if he's warm enough, the feeling of that nearly grown red-headed boy sliding away through my fingers before I really got to enjoy holding him, and the inevitable guilty knowledge that if I did not savor him fully, its my own fault. I thought of Alex down at his father's house, how I'd daydreamed about spending these extra days I have off from work with him and that I had told him to call me when he was ready to come back up here to spend some time with me. I vaguely knew he might not....all his friends are down there at his dad's house, and I struggled against hormonal hurt that he really didn't call, that he's still there and my time off is half over now. Its silly really. He'll be here tomorrow. But I feel it all slipping by me so fast. And of course, I thought of Joseph, already gone, my standing proof of how unpredictable life is and how not in control I am over my own little universe. This all sounds very morose and I suppose in its way it is. But the overwhelming feeling I have inside is really just that of love. Of wanting it to go on forever. The TV stations keep playing these montages of the faces and lives of famous and notable people who died in 2008. Last year, watching those were a torture, seeing the faces of those who died in 2007 and adding one more to the slideshow, the brittle grief of knowing my oldest child was amoung those who died and whose heart and accomplishments in my mother's heart mirrored all of those paraded across the screen yet so many on earth were never even aware he existed at all. This year I just watched all those faces, watched the videos of them while they were alive and marveled at how short life really is. That sounds so trite and cliche, but I have an understanding of it that I think most do not. I'm not stuck on that fact other than the realization that living with awareness is all we really can do. And when I live with that awareness, I find myself already wishing for more time with all of them. Its so hard to live in today. But that is my resolution this year. Live consciously, live the now. And my other resolution....write it. Write about it. Write Sheri. It preserves your sanity in a way nothing else ever has, no religion, no drug, no memory, no person, no experience. Write. Write. Whether people read it or not, write your heart. Write the New Year. Make this journal reflect the music of your life.
I sit here within the yearly mess that fleetingly makes one wonder why putting up Christmas decorations is worth it. I got most of them down yesterday, including the tree and now my living room looks as if it forgot to put on its pants. Something is missing. As I was taking down all the precious trinkets and carefully packaging them to survive another hot Texas summer in the attic (and a potential move to a new home), I pondered why the memories don't flood the same way they do when I am putting them up. I find taking it all down so blue and hazy, like a cold gray day that needs to be muscled through. I guess I don't like packaging things away. Its done on the faith that next year will be the same happy unpacking as it was this year and preparing everything for that once-a-year moment. I could not help the line of thought that made me wonder where we all will be this time next year. So much can change in a year, and that sensation has lingered in me through to this morning. I found myself turning to Joe in bed last night professing undying love in a half asleep state, curling into him as if his body itself could absorb me. I thought of my Nick, off at a winter camp with the Scouts, and fretting if he's warm enough, the feeling of that nearly grown red-headed boy sliding away through my fingers before I really got to enjoy holding him, and the inevitable guilty knowledge that if I did not savor him fully, its my own fault. I thought of Alex down at his father's house, how I'd daydreamed about spending these extra days I have off from work with him and that I had told him to call me when he was ready to come back up here to spend some time with me. I vaguely knew he might not....all his friends are down there at his dad's house, and I struggled against hormonal hurt that he really didn't call, that he's still there and my time off is half over now. Its silly really. He'll be here tomorrow. But I feel it all slipping by me so fast. And of course, I thought of Joseph, already gone, my standing proof of how unpredictable life is and how not in control I am over my own little universe. This all sounds very morose and I suppose in its way it is. But the overwhelming feeling I have inside is really just that of love. Of wanting it to go on forever. The TV stations keep playing these montages of the faces and lives of famous and notable people who died in 2008. Last year, watching those were a torture, seeing the faces of those who died in 2007 and adding one more to the slideshow, the brittle grief of knowing my oldest child was amoung those who died and whose heart and accomplishments in my mother's heart mirrored all of those paraded across the screen yet so many on earth were never even aware he existed at all. This year I just watched all those faces, watched the videos of them while they were alive and marveled at how short life really is. That sounds so trite and cliche, but I have an understanding of it that I think most do not. I'm not stuck on that fact other than the realization that living with awareness is all we really can do. And when I live with that awareness, I find myself already wishing for more time with all of them. Its so hard to live in today. But that is my resolution this year. Live consciously, live the now. And my other resolution....write it. Write about it. Write Sheri. It preserves your sanity in a way nothing else ever has, no religion, no drug, no memory, no person, no experience. Write. Write. Whether people read it or not, write your heart. Write the New Year. Make this journal reflect the music of your life.
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