New Year’s Resolutions

I make wishy-washy New Year’s resolutions. To write them down would simply be overwhelming. There’s so much I want do do but mostly, I just want to do better.

But if I were to write them down, “do better with my blog” would top the list. Gosh I was terrible last year. I love to make excuses so here’s one: I get behind, and I don’t know how to catch up. Example: I haven’t posted about Halloween, so how can I post about New Year’s?

As my mom has told me several times, it doesn’t matter.

So here’s my New Year’s post. Halloween will likely be a month from now.

Today:

I restarted (for the fourth time) my Loseit.com goal. I am a cliché. And starving.

Around 10am I convinced Sophie to climb into bed with me while Owen and James ran around the house shooting these Plane toy things at breakable things. It was snowy and windy and cold and we curled up together under my down comforter and my new raw wool blanket (a perfect Christmas present) and Sophie chatted on and on and on about “Garfield and Friends” (yes, the TV show from the late 1980s, she’s obsessed) and I listened and nodded and laughed and slightly dozed and as much as I love Christmas and all its decadence the decadence of just sitting in bed mid-morning doing nothing was, well, decadent.

I made a lunch that no one ate and one that Owen cried most of the way through because it wasn’t cinnamon-sugar toast, which is what he wanted.

We spent 40 minutes getting dressed to spend 20 minutes out in the snow.

It was gorgeous outside.

We built the world’s worst snowman. We were out of carrots (the reindeer ate them). I tried celery for a nose but it was much too big. So I used found vegetation. “It’s a bit lumpy,” Sophie said regarding the snowman’s smile.

We played.

Once inside I made hot chocolate. We were out of milk, so it wasn’t the cocoa-sugar-milk-vanilla-stovetop kind my mom always made us, but the instant powdery kind made with a kettle of hot water, which Sophie told me several times “wasn’t nearly as good.” But I threw in a ton of marshmallows, which helped.

Then I sat outside the half bath for more than an hour with hot tea, waiting. (Details aren’t necessary except to say we’re still potty training.)

I made dinner with hands that smelled like clementines. Dusk fell and the snowflakes fell slower but bigger—they were beautiful. I wished for George Winston in the background but Team Umizoomi won.

Andy was late (traffic) and cold. I fled upstairs to do freelance work for three hours while he played board games and insisted on bedtimes.

I ended the evening by finishing “Les émotifs anonymes,” (a lovely film), eating popcorn and drinking tea.

And now I’m back in bed, under my down comforter and raw wool blanket, listening to icy snow hit our drafty, old windows that rattle in the wind but are so fitting to the house we never want to change.

And even though it’s just a moment, a day, a month, I’m happy for new beginnings—for a chance to restart goals, improve upon one’s self—to try again.

“I made no resolutions for the new year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.” —Anaïs Nin

She said she hardly slept but I know that’s not true. I know that, because I hardly slept and I checked on her several times throughout the night, catching her fast asleep in her bed and later, in the early hours of the morning, in our bed.

When she did wake she wanted to go.

“It’s not time,” I said. “It’s too early.”

“We’ll walk slow,” she said. “Really, really slow. I promise.”

I showered and dressed. She put on the outfit she had picked out the night before, the one we had gone shopping for the week prior, the one I actually took the time to iron last night.

Andy clasped a new necklace around her neck, one that Grandma had made. I clasped an identical one around my neck. I gave them to her the night before, and explained the idea behind a worry stone. She chose the pink heart to be her worry stone. She rubbed it.

“Do you think we might rub it at the exact same time tomorrow?” she asked.

“I bet so,” I said.

We read The Kissing Hand.

Back to this morning. After we had had our cereal, and as I was pouring my coffee into a thermal cup she said, “You’re going to take that with you, right?” The idea of sitting around waiting for me to drink a cup of coffee was just too much.

“Yes,” I said.

We took pictures on the front porch. Owen and James sung their goodbye song to her. And we started to walk.

She clutched my hand and skipped. And yelled “wa-hoo!” several times during our walk. I love her life wa-hoos.

Halfway through she stopped and reached for her necklace, but not for her worry stone—rather she reached for another, silver, charm. “This,” she said, “is our excited stone. It’s what we’ll rub when we’re excited.”

I squeezed her hand and smiled.

We continued to walk. More parents and children donning backpacks filled the sidewalks. The entrance to the school was packed with children, parents and siblings.

She ran into friends made during preschool.

The principal opened the doors. Everyone poured in. There were balloons everywhere. I was delighted to learn that, at least on this day, we were able to walk her directly to her room.

Sophie became more quiet, her mouth sometimes set in that butterfly mixture of anxiety and excitement.

We found her classroom.

Her desk and her name tag.

Her cubby.

I hugged her goodbye.

As I left, she was rubbing a stone. I don’t know which one.

Despite the thick fog, I put on my sunglasses. And breathed deeply. And wondered why I was so teary. I knew I would be a little teary, but honestly, I didn’t expect the need to constantly wipe my cheek the entire walk home.

Andy was completely perplexed by all this.

“It’s just the start of school,” he said.

But it’s more. It’s the start of something new. She’s part of something bigger now. Daily she’ll experience, learn, see and do things I won’t ever know about—as she should.

And part, I think, is that she’s now doing something I vividly remember doing. And I’m done doing that. And she’s just starting. I saw the look on her face, that butterfly mixture of emotions and remembered. Something about our walk to school together this morning really reinforced the cyclical nature of life and the life seasons so many of us are lucky to experience.

My tears this morning weren’t because I was sad that I wasn’t spending this morning—and many future mornings—with her. Rather they were from someplace deeper. That place is mostly filled with joy and gratitude. But pockets of sadness hide in the corners of that place, too. It’s a deeper sadness, something bigger than “I’ll miss you.” Rather it’s a sadness that what she’s experiencing in life right now I’ve already done. And someday, she’ll have done it, too. And while I’d much rather move forward versus go back, the finality of our life phases can weigh heavy at times. So I think about what Kahlil Gibran wrote, “When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

Now, I’m fine. Completely and totally (mostly) fine. And so excited to walk back to the school with Owen and James, pick her up, and ask her questions all the way home—or at least until she tires of me asking them.

Goodbyes, to people, to periods of time, are hard. But those goodbyes make the hellos even sweeter.

“The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson.” —Orison Swett Marden