I feel like the absentee blogger.  This fall and early winter my mind nearly burst with thoughts which demanded virtual paper, and I was present to each prompt.  Then December came and my mind slowed a bit, I think protecting itself from the season.  That’s right, the season which seemed to mean everything once upon a time, and somehow became something I need to gird myself against.  I think I am not alone in this.

The second week of December is my favorite.  The festive tone begins its cheerful climb, perhaps sensing that we are finally ready.  There is hope in the second week, while the first seems premature, and the third, pressure-filled. Here in Northwestern Connecticut, little town squares look their best in week two, with twinkling white lights,  adorned trees, and church steeples bathed in moonlight, periodically ringing out Christmas songs we’ve known since childhood.  It’s nearly impossible not to feel hopeful in the second week of December.

The next two fly and with them go the dim hope that this Christmas will somehow exceed my expectation.  It doesn’t and the week to the New Year seems interminable.

As I write tonight just short of the midnight hour,  I hear fireworks in the distance, too soon announcing the change of the calendar. It’s warm for December 31 in Connecticut, and oddly, that is a bit disappointing, too.  My labrador always meets expectation, and sits beside me with his soft steady snore, untethered in assumption beyond daily walks and a twice filled bowl of food.

I am more than ready to put 2015 to bed.  It was a hard year, a sad and difficult year for me and for many of those I hold close.  The trick, I suppose, is figuring out how to turn all that on its head.

I will say goodbye to perseveration and looking back on what was in the hope that it will ever be again.  That Rubik’s Cube will be stored away in my metaphorical attic, welcome to collect the mold and dust it has earned.

I’ll write, and rework the writing, and write some more til I get the more important writing of a book to the place it deserves.

I will focus less on the physical care of Uncle Bobby and more on the emotional.  I am not a doctor or nurse or certified caregiver.  I am a niece whose heart swells with the memory of who he has been to me for 53 years.  Time now to be less administrator and more compassionate companion for the final leg of his journey.

I will cease seeking a partner the measure of myself, and be more that measure for myself.

I recall with fascination the respite enjoyed in the Emerald City by the beloved characters in The Wizard of Oz.  Who among us didn’t love the Scarecrow?  Poor fella had the stuffing plumb knocked out of him on his journey, and he was the absolute personification of bliss as straw was joyously stuffed back in.  Less impressively the Tin Man got his limber back, as the Cowardly Lion and Dorothy enjoyed the pampering they so desperately needed.

Of all those Iconic characters, it was the Scarecrow who captured my heart.  Pure Irony now that I felt like the stuffing was darn well pummelled out of me these last two years.  I lost the measure of myself in it; lost my swagger.  While we thought the Scarecrow needed a brain from the Wizard, we all found out, in a dandy twist.that his brain was well intact throughout the story.  Like all of us from time to time, the scarecrow really only lost his confidence, his sense of self.  A stumble here and there, and before he knew it, he forgot what it meant to walk tall. I forgot that, too.

It’s a tall order, to turn it all around, but I feel on the brink of it at the start of this New Year. I saw a marvelous little snippet today on social media.

You’re going to surprise

the shit out of yourself.

sincerely, 2016.

I’ll keep you posted….