Saturday, December 31, 2016

Here We Go Again


As if there could be any other star, this New Year's Eve. Hollywood's sweetheart, with so much about which she has no idea at all ahead of her, and as much a trouper in the stills gallery as she was everywhere else.

I'm as done with 2016 as anyone, but even so I can't say it's My Worst Year Ever, at least in the most personal of senses. This has been, after, not a year in which I was sawed nearly in half, spent a couple of hours with my heart outside my body or nearly so, got stitched back up, and then had a pulmonary embolism, and since that's not something I can say about 2015, there you go. Still, I have admit this year was relentless in trying to top all of that and, in the long haul, with the election, it just may have. We shall see.

Which, more than ever, is rather how one has to approach this New Year. We'll need to keep our wits about us, that much I know, as 2017 unfolds, despite whatever storms and losses come our way. I am wary, but unbowed, and working hard to keep some of the optimism that Debbie held on to, right to the very end.

We're having a quiet New Year's Eve - something that I've learned to love, really, in the years since I gave up hosting the annual party, which was great fun for a very long time (and involved over the years, in places from Manhattan to the Sandlands, all sorts of amusements and bad behaviors). Just us and the Retired Bikers, a good dinner at our favorite little boite, and then home, likely long before the witching hour. I'm going to try and stay up, though, this year, just to see the old one definitively off. Before it's all over, in the wee hours of the first day of the year, I'll sit alone for a few moments and think. Of what's past and what's lost, from this year in which the Mister and I both lost our last parent; in which together we lost our darling Koko, the light of our shared lives for so many years; in which it seemed an inordinate number of the great and the good, the truly famous and the closer to home, all set sail for Fabulon; in which, too, the great wide world seemed to grow a little less hospitable, a little less predictable and safe. That mostly shows, I know, how very protected, even coddled, a life I lead, but still it's unsettling. I don't know what the new year will bring, but I hope at the end of it we're all still safe and sound.

And I hope that's not too much to hope for, nowadays.


9 comments:

  1. Carrie Fisher said of her mother, “If anything, my mother taught me how to sur-thrive.”

    So let's all try to sur-thrive in the New Year.

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  2. It's just gone midnight here, and I'm sitting up just a bit longer and alone, and I'm doing exactly what you describe. I don't allow myself to dwell on all of life's inevitable losses, but I consider them all on this one night. And I just feel whatever comes up, before putting it all behind me again.
    I wish you and Mr. a very happy and peaceful 2017. Thank you again for you beautiful writing. x

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  3. Happy New Year to you Sugar, and to all you hold dear. Let us bolster one another with fellowship and love to sustain us through the uncharted...

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  4. Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing. - Lily Tomlin

    Happy New Year! Jx

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  5. I came upon your blog through Peter Lappin's blog because he sews and sew do I, but your blog has always caught my attention and I love to read it even though we seem to have nothing in common. You are a thoughtful man and an excellent writer and I like to think we would be friends were we to meet. My wishes for a very good year for your and your Mister.

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  6. have you noticed everyone sort of collectively holding our breath about Trump? This odd period between election and administration seems so much more fraught than usual. An unusual almost optimistic sense of "How bad can it be?" I'm sure we'll find out.

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    1. Perhaps it's just living in DC, but we do indeed feel it, quite acutely. And an unpleasant feeling it is. At the office, we just keep coming up with variations on "Well, it doesn't look as if it's going to be dull..."

      I rather wish it were.

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    2. "I've gotten through Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover
      Gee, that was fun and a half
      When you've been through Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover
      Anything else is a laugh"


      Jx

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