Sometimes I can keep track of things by the moon; I’ll see the full or new moon as some event happens, and then I’ll see the next month’s moon and be aware of the passage of time. Right now I have this awareness with the firsts of the months. It’s easy to do this during the first part of the year. January 1st is a holiday; February 1st is the day after my birthday; March 1st is exactly 28 days later, so it falls on the same day of the week. Today is Sunday. It is snowing, and I don’t have a headache (one came courting yesterday but did not linger or materialize overnight). The following reflection was written one month ago. It was another snow-covered day (also without a headache): The start of a New Year… When should we begin the count again? I’m pretty sure that most people started a New Year about a month ago, but maybe I’ll start today. On December 31, I went to bed with the beginnings of what became a rather severe migraine. I was at my in-laws’ house, and I spent the first day of 2015 hiding out in my husband’s high school bedroom. Yesterday, January 31st, my 39th birthday, I went to bed thinking about February 1st as the start of a new year. Doesn’t it make sense for my new years to begin from the point when all of my years started? Last year’s birthday was very similar to this year. I was at the same friend’s house to celebrate, and the same mid-west winter was upon us. What will next year’s birthday be? What will next year hold? I anticipate that I will be in the same place doing the same thing – not just the birthday festivities, but the weather and work and everything else. Just as I was thinking about next year, Brian asked me if I remembered where we were on January 31st of 2011 – four years ago. I didn’t remember that we were in San Francisco. That trip was my 1st time to see the Pacific, my 1st time to be west of the Rockies. Now, I’ve been back over that way seven more times. Four years ago I had not applied to and completed the MFA program, and we had not spent ten-months abroad. It is interesting to think of how much we have done in the these four years, but it is far more interesting to realize that we didn’t know about any of those things at the time. We could not yet see them on the horizon. It snowed all day today. The snow started yesterday evening and fell throughout the day. When we returned from San Francisco, we flew into a blizzard; February 1, 2011 was full of snow. The blizzard continued into the next day. If today begins a new year, it feels like a very familiar year. But what also is beginning that I don’t now know? A few of the unanticipated events of the past four years...
1 Comment
Mom
3/1/2015 10:07:51 am
How lovely! Thinking of you today and wondering if you and Brian were transporting a new candidate via icy Illinois roads, I read these musings of firsts and time and future unknowns not even speculated about.
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