December 17

Where does the old year go?

This has been a chaotic season—not at all the usual Yuletide peace and revelry. As you have no doubt figured out, my child has left the East coast and moved to the West coast. From the dawnland of the East to the west of the setting sun. Now, I understand that this is what children do. They grow up in to men and women and they go off on their own adventures and in to their own lives.

Bran hasn't lived with us for seven years, but he was nearby in our old hometown, so he came home for the Winter Solstice and Christmas.

But how strange it is when the child turns in to a teenager, and the teenager grows up to be a man and sets off on a journey west, packing up his things, leaving even more of his things in your basement, and carrying the child-he-once-was inside him. And how strange it is that this is happening at Yuletide, my favorite season of the year. I feel a bit like the old year passing. Another chapter completed and you shut the book. Remember the old Groucho Marks quip "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read..." Inside a closed book, with pages pressed close together, it's very dark.

Bran and Susie opened up a brand new book together when they moved. Crisp white pages, waiting to be written on. How I envy the excitement of being young and starting out even as I cherish the "hmm, if I knew then what I know now" wisdom of, dare I say it, age. Joe and I look back at being that age and say "If I knew then what I do now...". Somehow this phrase can heal the past. "If I knew then that it would hurt your feelings, I would have done things differently." "If I knew then, what I do now I would have stood up for myself..." "If I knew then what I do now, I would have come home early just to play..." "If I knew then what I knew now I would have told you...." Somehow, it's possible to change the past by traveling back on the phrase, if I knew then....

In the meantime I've closed one book, the candle has flickered out and I'm sitting in the dark for a little while, but I welcome the new light I know is coming on the Winter Solstice. I will begin another book now. I don't know what it will be, but I hope it has a surprise ending, maybe even happily ever after.