On this last week of 2016, as we engage in familiar routines, I work in the kitchen amid aromas of spicy chili and sweet corn bread, pumpkin buckle and a freshly brewed pot of coffee.
In some ways, this week is no different from the same week of years past. We look at the weather, feed the birds, pay bills, and wait for January’s tax paperwork to appear. A bonus is the occasional seed catalog.
We try to go for a walk at least once a week. Walking in the park where a few crows sit atop bare skeletons of trees, eyeing us, can be a healing, calming act. Or walking in the small cemetery down the road, where quiet, peaceful air moves gently over personalized stones, some a hundred years old. Or strolling down by the pond where geese softly move over grasses to find a bit of something to eat.
Looking back over the past year, we ask ourselves what is it we learned from warm spring days in the garden (plants start out in funny shapes); from hectic days of computer mishaps (machines have a mind of their own); from the realization that nothing about the state’s dumping thousands of us retirees over into the Medicare system will work out to our benefit (who can you trust nowadays?).
We realize that it is no use despairing over negatives. The year takes them out with its last breath and replaces them with a promise of new days.
What will we wish for? Peaceful times are paramount. We are not naïve enough to think this world will ever again get whole days of the precious commodity of peace, but we wish for at least a few hours of it each day, not only for ourselves but also our entire community.
We wish for our neighbors and friends to stay safe. Again, we realize that in the times we live in the odds of complete safety are pared away like shingles from a roof in high winds. But we can hope.
Patience seems to be at the center of all things learned this year.
We wish for you, dear reader, to have a year of positives. We hope your days will be satisfying and fulfilling, and your paths paved with patience and lots of hugs. And we thank you all for reading our blogs and sharing with us in your blogs. See you in 2017.
