New Year

The big ball has fallen in Times Square, and we're already into the New Year - 2015. To quote Sarah Ban Breathnach on brainyquote.com: “New Year’s Day. A fresh start. A new chapter in life waiting to be written. New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved. Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery. Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand. Only dreams give birth to change.”

So, do you have a dream for 2015? Something expansive? Large? Or not so large. Something you always wanted to do, be or have? Something where you go beyond limits. The New Year awaits your inspiration.

The holidays this year were my inspiration for my latest photo book. It was a gift to my grandson, Samuel, for his birthday. I made one for his sister’s birthday in August, so of course he had to have one. It’s filled with photos of him from 2014 with accompanying poems. It was quite a project, and definitely worth it to see his expression as he looked through the book with his Dad.

A book like this shows that he is much loved, much valued in this world.

My daughter and her family visited, and it was lovely having them around. Christmas is magical with children anticipating opening the many gifts scattered around the tree. We enjoyed a holiday feast with all the trimmings on Christmas Eve, the opening of many, but not all the gifts, and  a plate of cookies and cup of milk set out for Santa in anticipation of a few more gifts in the morning.

Photo books are my special legacy, and a creative way to mark one’s passage through life.

As Stephen Spielberg is quoted: “All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our lives.” Certainly Samuel is not the same person he was in 2013, or 2012, or any other year since his birth.

And neither are we. In conversations with the family, we discussed my living on my own and somewhat overwhelmed at times taking care of the home in which everyone but me has left. Kids grew up. Husband made his transition. And here I am. Living in an “artifact,” said my son-in-law. Perhaps it is time to move. he suggested.

That gave me pause. I hadn’t thought that I was living in an artifact, which is an object remaining from an earlier period. Yes, the house is an artifact, and I’ve been in the throes of decluttering the accumulated stuff and things --many many artifacts -- from the forty some years I, and my family, lived in the house.

So this is a new year, with new decisions and new challenges. I’m still digesting the “artifact” description of my home, and deciding what to do about it. But whatever I do, or whatever any of us do in this new year of 2015, here’s another quote, from British author Neil Gaiman: “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.”

So let's do something. Let's try new things. Let's make mistakes. Let's live, learn and grow.

And so it is.