Happy New Year! Here in the Pacific Northwest, 2021 has begun with… rain. That’s no surprise. Rain is the forecast from something like October to June. I must admit, it’s a touch harder to bear than usual thanks to, you know, the pandemic. Last night the nuclear family watched the Times Square celebration (and, later, a curious Space Needle CGI light show) while drinking tea and playing our new favorite game: Coup. To quote T. S. Eliot, the year definitely went out “with a whimper.”
Truthfully, though, the morning of January 1, 2021, was tougher. Everyone in the household was grappling with a weird vibe. A painful stillness. The new calendar had moved no real needles. The vaccine rollout (yes, that needle pun was intended) remains a mess. And, as far as we can see, both the high schooler and the college boy will continue to be learning online.
In short, this Happy New Year has been a bit of a family-wide existential crisis. (Stay with me, here, getting to the happy part.) And… Then…
Thinking there’d be fireworks in this paragraph? Gotcha! (Please note that the above is a great lesson in emotional pacing, writer friends.) Seriously, THEN… I did what I’d intended to do all day: I sat down to write. More accurately, I sat down at my computer to finish a poem started several days back. It’s entitled “The Silence of 2020.” Here’s a taste:
It’s day 298 since we walked away from our lives,
Since we began to shroud ourselves.
Stitch by stitch, I sewed a single mask for each family member
Out of fabric scraps from abandoned craft projects
Lined in the soft cotton of a discarded undershirt.
Not an upper, huh? And not exactly Pulitzer material. Two hours and only 178 words later, I gave up on posting a poem for New Year’s Day. But here’s the win:
I began 2021 as I mean to go on. If you like Instagram hashtags, it’s #BAYMTGO. The brainchild of Grishaverse author Leigh Bardugo, “begin as you mean to go on” is a gorgeous, gentle way to set your intentions for the new year simply by doing what you want to do. Now. Today.
And I did! It’s ugly and awkward and not part of my current W-I-P but I sat in the chair, put the fingers to the keyboard, and (despite the short-term incurable angst and loneliness of my kids) I did what I needed to do to BEGIN this year with words.
The day’s not done. The fight can still be won. How can you #BAYMTGO? Whatever that beginning is for you, even if you can only give it fifteen minutes, go and do it. You deserve it.
