Some things, and then some others.

It's a New Year. And welcome to it. May it be kind. May we be wise.


1. The last several months have been some of the most painful in my life, and in my marriage.

2. Hope is not lost. That thing with feathers, that is strong like a jack hammer or a bull or a mother with a child in danger.

3. I did get the haircut. I like it a lot. It's shorter in the back. And so, this morning, when the Mister nuzzled and kissed my neck, lips on skin made goosebumps and heart thumping like I'd forgotten the likes of.

4. Despite pain-- physical and mental and emotional-- I'm also the kind of happy that can't easily be shaken these days. My fibromyalgia and arthritis are getting harder to live with, though I'm learning to manage them. Too, the mental and emotional stuff. The forties have been the kind of challenge that makes me strong enough to not just withstand it, but to thrive.

5. I really love my job.

6. I've learned that my adult time is precious to me, that I derive great satisfaction and a healthy boost of energy from it.

7. Last year's enormous list of resolutions, goals and thoughts for 2009 are very typical of me. I take on too much. I try to cram so much in, and essentially get behind and everything suffers to some degree or other. (And yet, in reviewing this list, I didn't do as poorly as I'd imagined in terms of addressing some of these.)

8. I'm learning! This year, I had an insight on the way to work one morning while driving the back roads: in 2010, I simply resolve to be punctual. To be interpreted liberally, and applied in broad strokes to my conduct.

9. On a family walk in the very very cold yesterday, our Ziggy spotted a great heron. I am taking that as a sign. We three stood together on the edge of a bluff and watched the heron at the pond's edge, wind whipping at us, sunshine extending our shadows like spirit selves.

10. I really do love holding my husband's hand.

11. My Ziggy is experiencing depth of emotion, and of ways to express it. Of late, at night at bedtime and through the night as he wakes, he whispers, "I love you SO much, Mama." His hands press my cheeks and his choked up voice is hot and close, "You are so beautiful, Mama. So lovely."

One night during the week he and I were at my folks' house for holiday celebration, he told me, "Mama, I don't love Daddy best. I love you both, so much, I want to cry. I love you more even than Jesus, or God." This rush of feeling, the extent to which he equates it with feelings for Jesus and God remind me of my own childhood, and of big feelings I didn't quite know how to give life to.

Home in our own bed, the big cozy family bed with clean sheets and heavy blankets and the three of us crumped in close, Ziggy says, "Mama, you are my Dad's wife." And, "Daddy, isn't Mama a sweet lady?"

In the dark, he says, "I am smiling at you, Mama. Are you smiling back?" His fingers run across my face to feel my lips upturned, my teeth exposed.

12. There are days, too, where Ziggy tells me, "Give me food NOW, or go to jail!" There are crying jags and screaming fits and kicking the driver's seat as I attempt to navigate the interstate through traffic filled lanes. There are extended periods of distress and confusion at such big feelings. Night terrors, and nothing being quite right: feet too hot, food too mushy or too crunchy, things not in the right place. The rhyme and reason of the day ass over tea kettle.

The sense I get, from having nannied other children, from having a slew of girlfriends with children many years before I had my own, and from speaking with other parents, is that my child isn't quite like most children.

None of which surprises me. He is who he is.

13. I remember when I fell in love with my husband. It was as if a soft forest enveloped me and everything finally made sense. A magnolia bloomed from my chest. Then my heart fell out and crashed to the floor and shattered into a million pieces and it was all so beautiful it ached.

14. Once, in those early days, I remember my then new lover howling at the moon and laughing and dancing 'round a spot of dirt, as if at long last his own big feelings could be let loose.

15. This being human is a guest house, yes.

16. I believe that I am made for distance, not speed. For pushing this sturdy ample peasant body forward into each new day. For embracing those opportunities to love each other more, for clicking into the rhythm of the this is the way it goes.


I am right on time.

Happy New Year.