Back to It

I’ve let this slip again, haven’t I? Well let’s see if we can back to it with a promise and a confession (two of my many favorite things). The promise is more to me than anyone that might be reading (Bueller?…Bueller?…) but I promise to post at least twice a week between now and March. That seems reasonable and it’s a good exercise for me. So there’s that.

Second, the confession. 2012 became a hard year to rattle on about round about June of last year. In some ways it was just because life got so dense, and pardon the tree-laden pun (for those of you that have been following along) but I couldn’t see the forest through the trees. Or is it for the trees? Well, the point being, our cup did runneth over, mostly with heart-filling stuff, but with some heart-tugging stuff too. And because confessions are supposed to be honest, I’m going to come on out and say it. 2012 kind of kicked the shit out of me. If there is a delicate way to have such a thing done, then I’ve been on the business end of a delicate butt kicking. It was good for me. Sometimes it hurt.

So here we are, 2013, right back to it. My backside is recovering, my ego is humbled, our home fires are burning, and in the scope of the first world universe, even a tough year was undeniably a good one. As with most people, we’re setting our sights on patterning for a good year ahead, but unlike many years in the past, Drew and I both seem to be at a crossroads where the work that we want to put in this year isn’t dedicated to a trimmer waistline or a more frequently cleaned bathroom (though, let’s do those things too), but really we’re focusing on life in terms of decades. One turns 30, one starts thinking about What Comes Next. The word that I would like to give to 2013 is pivotal.

In the dreamy summer that I spent in Madison, Wisconsin nearly ten years ago, my dear friend Nelle and I would steal away with a canoe and paddle through the locks between the two lakes that hug Madison. We would paddle into one, sink down with the water, have the lock open up and glide through safely to the other side. Something big was happening around us, we were dwarfed by larger boats with big engines, but even in the narrow little canoe, we were able to stick our paddles in the water and row to what felt like the other side of the rainbow. It was thrilling and a simple enough mechanism, but one that was ultimately transformative. This year feels like that adventure. perhaps 2012 was the distance that I needed to travel between my twenties and thirties, a slow and discreet move between the prolonged adolescence that America is so fond of and my arrival into womanhood. It seems though that right now, on this day, and this point, I’m sitting in the locks watching the water slowly drain, waiting to see the gate in front of my little boat open. It seems like I might be about to paddle through to the next phase of my life.

You see why I haven’t been blogging? I’m like the weird weepy aunt at the family picnic that everyone wishes would go wandering off to find the nearest man selling a horse. Perhaps if I get all this I’m-on-the-threshold business out, I can go back to telling you things about wanting to build a chicken coop and my concern for Tuesday’s dinner. I don’t know though, there’s something different here. I needed that delicate butt kicking. It made my heart grow.

So there we go, a new year, a promise, a confession, and a long winded boat metaphor. It’s as though no time has passed at all. Happy New Year!