A New Year

A new one for me anyway.

I have always thought of the beginning of the year as September instead of January.  Maybe it's those 22 straight years of back-to-school preparation and excitement.  Maybe because it's my birthday month.  I love the beginning of fall, the smell in the air, the color of the sky.  My whole life, September has been a warm to hot month with just a hint of cool weather.  This year, the feeling started last week -- in August.  It's cool in the mornings and cool at night and just fine during the day, so I'm looking forward to a couple of months of enjoyment before the rain and cold come.

In two weeks, Mike will have been gone a year, and I don't think a new year is going to help much.  I still wake up missing him and go to bed missing him, but there are whole chunks of time during the day when I get on with my life and laugh and enjoy things.  I was able to see his mountain with the dark clouds sitting on top of them last night without being sad and just enjoying the beauty.

I think I'm going to make a conscious effort to get out of my sadness and fear of going forward if I can.

Now that Elise is here, I'm enjoying time at home more, cooking, talking, even watching TV, something I didn't do for the past year.  Not that watching TV is anything very enjoyable, but it is getting out of my self-centered rut.  And school starts next week, so I will have 3 middle of the days to do what I want.

I had a moment yesterday afternoon when life just creates the perfect moment, and you know you will remember it for a long time.  Just a simple thing.  A cloudy Thursday afternoon around 5:00 after 8 hours of togetherness with the girls.  Sometimes that's not a good thing when they're hungry or grumpy or I'm tired.  Or all of those.  But that moment was just right.  I was sitting in a chair with a lamp on behind me and my long-awaited book from the library.  Graysen had brought the bag of blocks into the den and left them, planning to come back to build after she "cleaned up the playroom a little bit."  She was doing it very cheerfully, and she and Kate were chatting.  Then Kate came into the den and picked up the bag of blocks and started building.  Possibly a very bad thing.  Sure enough, Graysen came into the den with plans to build and saw Kate with her blocks.   Amazingly, (after a small frown and a glance at me), she just sat down beside her and started her own project.  She then noticed that a piece she wanted to start with was already being used and started to tell me about it.  Kate looked up and said, "Here, Gwacie, you can have the windows."  Wow.  All the hard work and lessons on sharing and loving each other, and here they were making it come true.

If Mike had been there, we would have looked at each other and grinned smugly.

I just opened my book and started reading.

I'm going to try harder this year.