N E W Y E A R
For what it’s worth, I hope you have a joyous new year. I hope that, if you choose to resolve nothing, then I hope in that choice you find your own forms of blessings and kindnesses. And I hope that, if you do resolve something, you find in that resolution something that allows you to be more fully aware of yourself and this world. But most of all, I wish you the benefits of ordinariness and attention, and kindness. I wish you at least one nose (preferably your own) pressed into the soft lightness of just-baked bread. I wish you laughter that comes at a moment when you feel too serious or too scared to laugh, and I wish you the silliness of snot coming out of both nostrils at the wrong time, or of a dance, you try to learn but fail to. I wish you the feeling of being yourself in your body. I wish you one less day of shame than you are used to, but hopefully one less week, and hopefully an entire year (I wish this for myself, too). I wish you a deep breath next spring, next summer, next autumn, and I wish you a big, poofy cloud of steam when you exhale next winter. I wish you a tomato season full of sandwiches and sauces reduced to perfection. I wish you pasta to toss in those, and others to share that pasta with. I wish you music, even when it’s the wrong note on an out-of-tune piano. And I wish you that feeling that happens — so often on one of those bright, blue sky days — when you are doing something so simple and ordinary you’d never give it a second thought when you’re walking to get coffee with someone, or maybe you’ve just gotten it, and maybe it’s a little too hot, the coffee is, and you’re waiting to take that next sip, and there’s a hand near yours or in yours, and there are people around, and those people are being people, full of their own doubts and joys and little mannerisms, and you’re waiting, you’re waiting, you’re loving, you’re waiting, and you take that next sip, slightly braced, but ready for it, for whatever it could be, however hot, however scalding, and it’s perfect, and you are caught in that moment, and you are held. I wish you that. I wish you that joy.
