On the promise of the new
it's all going to show itself any day now
The start of the new year feels different. Usually, I can’t wait to start the next thing, rested and ready for my new diet, my new notebook, my new workout, the new calendar. Instead, I’m leaving the tree up until March.
The olive oil cake is wrapped tight in cellophane, still sitting on the kitchen table. I take a longing look at it on my way by to plug in the coffee pot and stop to pound my hand on the window glass. A blur of orange fur flings itself into the tall bush that blocks most of our kitchen table view to the front yard. I knew it! I thought that the birdseed was going down way too fast. All week I saw only an occasional tiny bird alight on the side and steal a single black sunflower seed before darting off again— window carry-out service.
“Guess who is eating all the seed,” I call out to my spouse Janyce who isn’t out of bed yet. “It’s the red squirrel with his whole body wedged in between the plastic tray and the glass.”
‘‘That bastard,” she says.
It’s Saturday morning, the end of a long stretch of holiday and vacation days— of baking, of cooking, of cleaning the garage, of taking short cold walks in the woods nearby, of watching out the windows to the backyard at the feeder pole, the same one that attracts twenty different kinds of birds, and about seven well-fed squirrels. I had a long list of things I wanted to do while the two of us were on an extended vacation, just me and Janyce, separated from family and friends and mostly in the house. We did some of them, but we also did a lot of what I’m doing again this morning, walking around, pausing and standing in front of various windows, sighing, and pouring more coffee. We watched every Christmas movie we could remember, drank cocktails, scoured Youtube for Celtic music and morning Mozart channels to display on the big screen in our living room, and ended the year under a blanket with a medley of old romantic comedies.
“Did you know the Amish are moving into Vermont? says Janyce, now looking up from last week’s Sunday paper she is holding half-folded on her lap. “And, I didn’t know this, but it’s apparently okay for them to ride in a car, just not drive it. That’s splitting hairs a bit, don’t you think?”
“I dreamed last night that I was summoned back to work with an embossed invitation,” I say. “No ink, just a blank page with the words pressed into the paper. I had to go back in. But I don’t have any pants I can fit in. I’m serious.”
The start of the new year feels different. Usually I can’t wait to start the next thing, rested and ready for my new diet, my new notebook, my new workout, the new calendar. Instead, I’m leaving the tree up until March.
A friend on facebook posted a few lyrics to “Life is Sweet” by Natalie Merchant the other day meant as her affirmation for the coming year.
For they told you life is hard, it’s misery from the start
It's dull, it's slow, it's painful
But I tell you life is sweet, in spite of the misery
There's so much more, be grateful
So who will you believe?
Who will you listen to, who will it be?
'Cause it's high time that you decide…
That song is from one of my favorite albums from the 90’s, only I wouldn’t choose the positive song she chose. I lean more to the melodramatic and the moody. In fact, I can’t get the lyrics and tune of an old 90’s Seal song “A Prayer for the Dying,” out of my head this morning. I played it this week, keeping up the with same theme of nostalgia as our movie choices.
I’m crossing that bridge with lessons I’ve learned.
I’m playing with fire but not getting burned.
I may not know what you're going through
But time is the space between me and you
There is a light through that window
Hold on say yes while people say no
Life carries on, and on, and on,
It goes on.
Twenty five years ago, I would exit the house as soon as my husband Jim walked through the front door at the end of the workday, bundled up for the winter with headphones under my wool hat. I would listen to this entire Seal album while walking brisk laps in the dark around the tight circle of the Franklin condo complex we lived in. It was January, we had one car, and not much furniture, and I had no job and a second baby at home. I felt every bit as closed in, tired, and heavy as I do right now. But I was out there, walking laps and pushing myself forward. Believing that cold dark January held all the promises for the new year ahead. I guess I still do.
“No wonder Vermont is doing as well as it is with Covid,” says Janyce. “There are no people there any more. That’s why it’s so great that the Amish are moving in.” She stands up and places the paper down on the chair.
“Where are you going?” I say.
“I’m going to go work out,” she says and smiles.
“I’ll get started, too,” I say. “I think I will deliver some orange olive oil cake to Jim.”