At the day’s writing session, V. greets us from 2022 and she reports to the rest of us, still stuck in 2021 for the next few hours, that so far so good on the new year. No one in Australia has broken it yet, she says. My sensitive intuitive writing friends and I laugh at the joke, and talk about our plans and non-plans for the year. We discuss the value of goals, the pressure of goals, and some of us have lists of things we hope to accomplish and others have come up with more of a mission statement to guide the days that follow midnight. All of us are grateful that we’ve had this past year together while we create something out of nothing.
Normally at the new year, I’m equal parts hopeful (that it will be a good year, that I’ll be a productive person, that the wind will remain at my back yadda yadda yadda) and nostalgic for the year that was. Not so much because any given year was so remarkable that I don’t want to let go of it, but because it is now known in its entirety, has been survived, and seems like a tamed creature whose behaviors–in retrospect–were predictable even if they weren’t. (If you’d told me last January that even after vaccines there’d be new variants of our unwanted guest, we all probably would have been in tears. Omicron? Really? Weren’t the first several iterations enough?) It’s the difference between a book you are looking forward to reading and that book finished and how it did or didn’t live up to your expectations, how it surprised you but is no longer a surprise, and you wonder how much of it you’ll remember a week from now or five years from now.
This year I’m not looking back on 2021 with any particular fondness or hatred. It’s the first year that trying to label a year as good or bad seems a ludicrous proposition. There’s value in sifting through the artifacts (and debris) of a year and assessing how you wish it had gone, what worked well, where you’d make changes if you got do-overs, but after a lifetime of believing there was something special about January 1st or my birthday or a Monday of any week–as if it held magical properties– I’m done with that.
This past year changed for me in the middle of a week in mid August when I found out the vaccine hadn’t quite worked for me, and then–after moping around for half a day and feeling suddenly very vulnerable–I finally thought, okay then, what are you going to do with yourself since you won’t be living your life outside of these walls anytime soon? And I drew up some plans for things I’d like to get done by the end of the year: eat better, exercise more, read more, write more, submit more (writing, not to Z…I’ve never been good with submitting to anyone and there was no ‘obey’ in my marriage vows, thank you), and I did almost all of the items on my list for the first time ever in my life. Normally, 364 days after I make New Year’s resolutions, they suddenly just look like wishful thinking written by someone who doesn’t understand anything about how my brain works.
There was nothing magical about the day in August. There was no ceremony to my deciding–I didn’t light a candle or burn sage (we signed a lease where open flames are forbidden). I didn’t wait for a new moon or meditate. There’s a good chance I didn’t even have a shower that day. But I came up with some goals…or maybe “guidelines” is a better word…and the next day I kept working towards those things. And the next day, and the next day, and now here we are…on the brink of 2022 and the only thing I didn’t accomplish was getting a new website up and running. (Mainly because I’m terrified and keep putting it off, so I’ll have to face my fears and get a website up by the end of March. I’m adaptable!
We had some snow this week, which was perfect for my need for winter weather. It got really cold (for Seattle) and has required hats and scarves and gloves and given me that taste of winter I need every year to feel like myself. Z and I went out on our daily walks and it felt like a real score when we saw actual icicles on the Stimson-Green mansion up the street. Icicles aren’t usual here, or at least haven’t been for the last several years. For that matter, neither are snowmen, and we were delighted yesterday to find a few of these little mini ones that would fit into a purse like a Yorkshire Terrier. We’ve also enjoyed seeing a variety of neighborhood dogs in some truly jaunty winter coats and sweaters. Yesterday there was a black Lab in what I can only describe as a fisherman’s turtle neck Aran sweater, and he looked delighted to be wearing it instead of mortified. I imagine him at his apartment this evening drinking hot toddies with his humans by a fireplace with some soft jazz playing in the background while he waits for the new year.
As for me, I will spend the remaining hours of 2021 doing a jigsaw puzzle, hanging out with Z, and filling in the first 12-weeks of my new fabulous planner that will give the impression that I’m actually organized and know exactly what I want 2022 to be. It’s going to be whatever it wants to be and none of us can change that, but I’m hoping I can keep nudging myself towards doing the things that please me and make me feel like I’m living my life instead of life just happening to me. The problem with the last two years has been how we’ve all had to come to terms with how little control we have, perhaps.
Thank you for reading my blog this year. I hope 2022 brings all of us more of the things we want, less of the things we don’t. Fingers crossed for good sense, good health, and good fortune.
Or is that a jinx? Am I meant to be saying something like whatever the new year equivalent of “break a leg” is? Also, can you even say Happy New Year when it’s the first of February? Shouldn’t the greetings be over by now?
So far, I haven’t been that impressed by 2021, have you? It’s felt like a worse version of 2020 with an added layer of insurrection. Normally, I don’t put much stock in years being “good” or “bad”—it’s all just the peaks and valleys of being alive—but so far, I am of the mind that the successful coup has been that 2020 is still in office and we just don’t realize it yet. Every morning Z and I look at our phone messages and then ask the other with dread what the news is from our home and from friends. Used to, I’d be whining because the Seahawks were dispatched from the playoffs so quickly or a neighborhood party was loud, but now any day that doesn’t require a sympathy card or new additions to a prayer list feels like a win.
It doesn’t help that in addition to the new beautiful views out of the study at Oh La La that I’m always crowing about, there is also a straight line to an elderly care facility. About half the time I look that direction—directly down the street from my own now bi-focal needing eyes —there are the lights of ambulances flashing out front. On my best days, I say a quick prayer wishing them well, wishing them a lack of fear, wishing them people in their lives who love and care for them. On worse days, however, I angle my chair so I can’t see it at all. It’s a little too close to comfort, the home for the aged. Fiftysomething seems younger now than it did when my grandparents were in their fifties or when my great grandmother was wearing those old-timey clothes, but the days are zipping by. Even if we survive the pandemic, we are, as Alanis Morissette said, temporary arrangements.
Not thrilled with how those power lines seem to connect me with distant sadness.
When I was in high school with my penchant for English and art, I had friends—all male, please note—who liked to remind me that careers with words and art weren’t that lucrative. These boys were good with science and numbers. My father, also good with numbers, felt my chosen major in college—English without the education degree (because I took one ed class and was bored)—might turn me into a pauper and so I should consider a business major despite the fact that I had been a disaster at selling Girl Scout cookies and only loved his cast-off briefcase because it held my art supplies. Though my professors insisted we could do a lot with an English degree, they never handed out lists or offered us much advice beyond “go to grad school” which was, after all, what their own experience had been. Still, I loved words on a page whether mine or someone else’s, and nothing else felt like a good fit.
There were plenty of times—especially during the “spinster librarian” phase—when the mystery of my life was why I hadn’t tried harder to get myself on one of those more lucrative career paths. Or, at the very least, a career path that was less nebulous. On the early morning drive to work, I’d stare at construction workers and think about how much more straightforward and useful their work was: the world needed places to live and roads that weren’t riddled with potholes and so their jobs were to solve those problems.
What exactly was I solving at the library? How to convince someone that if they didn’t pay their fines before checking out another book the entire library system would crumble? Even I didn’t believe that one.
You might like to eat cookies, kiddo, but you’re never going to be good at selling them no matter what hat you wear.
One day you wake up, and it’s your birthday, and a few days later multiple friends near your age start talking about their retirement plans in six years or so, and if you are me, you think, but wait a minute, I still haven’t completely figured out what I want to be when I grow up—who wants to retire? And then you realize that while you were trying to figure out what to do with yourself, you were actually living your life.
Who knew?
If I had to have business cards printed right now, I still don’t even know what they should say. “Writer. Teacher. Ponderer” is closest to the truth, but I don’t have a contract from St. Martin’s or tenure, so “ponderer” seems to be the most accurate measure of how I’ve lived my life but the pay is not so good.
Usually on January 6th what I’m pondering is the miracle of my own birth with a very small side order of the arrival of the magi at the manger to visit the infant Jesus. (I do this primarily because it seems wrong to have a birthday on Epiphany and not acknowledge that before it became my birthday it had other, greater significance. That said, the quality of my pondering is often along the lines of wondering what Mary thought when these fancy men rolled up with their expensive jars and boxes of treats for a baby. Because I’m pretty sure what I’d have been thinking is Do you mind if I return this? We’re still living in a manger here and we need some onesies and a Diaper Genie.)
This year, however, I didn’t get to ponder Epiphany or the last five decades of my life because just as I was finishing a morning writing session, my cousin texted that the Capitol had been breached. So Z and I spent the rest of the day thinking about the fragility of democracy, the importance of critical thinking, and how in 1980 my youth group members and I were practically strip searched before we were allowed in the Capitol but somehow the masses were able to break in and run rampant.
I realize it’s not all about me, but I’ve spent my life knowing my birthday so close to Christmas was a pain for people, that it was a high holy day, a birthday I have to share with E.L. Doctorow, Rowan Atkinson, John DeLorean, and Vic Tayback. But now, oh joy, it is a date that will live in infamy. I can hardly wait for next year’s Facebook memes reminding me to “never forget.”
What is wrong with people? You love democracy so you break it’s windows and smear excrement in its hallways while carrying a flag with a man’s name on it as if he’s a king? This is not what I learned about Democracy and the Constitution from my School House Rock cartoons. (Hint: you don’t get to revolt because your person didn’t win. I learned it in grade school and was reminded of it again during both the 2000 and the 2016 elections when I had to lick my wounds without the solace of fur pants and Viking helmet.)
What have we become?
After several hours of watching the news and feeling gloomy about the future, Z and I finally went up on the roof. We were going to go on a walk, but Seattle being Seattle, there were some demonstrations we weren’t interested in getting caught up in when tensions were so high, so instead we let the wind on the rooftop whip us around a bit. We watched the sunset, looked at Mt. Baker which made a rare appearance in the distance, and had a false sense momentarily that all was right in the world. It was beautiful. Later, I was feted by Z and a Zoom version of my folks and opened presents and ate cake. I did, however, forget to put on my tiara.
Welcome to my party, Mt. Baker.
From my new vantage at Oh La La I can see the chimney tops of the Stimson-Green Mansion. First Hill used to be flush with mansions but we’re now down to about four, and the Stimson-Green is something special. It’s Tudor Revival, looks like something from a storybook, and is even more delightful inside with each room decorated in a different style. I’ve written about it before. Though all I can see are the chimney and the roofline, I know what sits under it and had the good fortune to tour it, so when I see those chimneys, I’m able to imagine this area in the early 20th century when horses and wagons were making deliveries to the fancy houses, and the residents therein all knew each other and had, for whatever reason, decided they’d rather make their fortunes in the Pacific Northwest instead of Back East. They were not, I assume, English majors.
Stimson-Green Mansion after a snow fall last year.
Next to the mansion is the small, just renovated First Hill Park, and there has been an addition to the old foot print of a bronze, three-piece sculpture of two bear cubs playing on a wingback chair and ottoman. The sculpture was created by Georgia Gerber who also created the famous Rachel the Pig at Pike Market that I’ve rarely gotten close to because it’s always covered with tourists. This new one is a whimsical sculpture that invites you to sit in the chair with the bear cubs frolicking nearby, and it might seem random, but it isn’t.
The young daughter of the mansion was giving a pair of newborn black bear cubs by her father’s foreman when they were orphaned because their mother was killed in a logging accident. She named the cubs Johnny and Irish, and for the first ten months of their lives, she raised them, played with them, and, one assumes, loved them. (She preferred animals to people.) The upper verandah of the house was their playpen and she regularly walked them around the neighborhood without a leash.
Z has a fit when he sees a dog off leash on our daily walks. Can you imagine if we’d been bumping into little Dorothy with Johnny and Irish? Oh my goodness.
When I think of the bears, I try to focus on the early days of their lives when they were living in the mansion, tumbling over the dragon andirons by the big fireplace, roaming the neighborhood. Before they got so rambunctious with greeting people—not aggressive, apparently, just a little too enthusiastic in their attentions because they were no longer little bears. So they were taken to Woodland Park Zoo where they lived all their remaining days. I wonder about the drive to the zoo. Were they treated like beloved family pets who got to ride shotgun, taking in the city as they neared their new home? Did Dorothy go with them and was it a tearful goodbye? (How could it not have been?) Was their enclosure at the zoo spacious and humane or was it like the tiny wire cage the bear at the park where I grew up had to live? I spent my childhood wanting to see the animals at the park zoo and then feeling instantly sick and sad because they were in small cages and not living the lives they deserved to live. Dorothy would apparently visit them and she pointed them out to her own daughter. She might have been a practical person, but I’m guessing she longed to take them back to the house on Minor Avenue and let them romp on the furniture.
Less exciting neighborhood ponderables:
Show-off.
This tree. It’s on a mini traffic circle and seems not to realize it’s January. All the other trees around it are naked, but this one is still dressed for a ball. I can’t decide if it’s some kind of sick that means it forgot to drop it’s leaves or if it’s just showing off.
Why our fabulous trash chute is suddenly not working and we now have to carry our garbage down the elevator.
Why I have quit seeing Toast the corgi in the lobby. Has he moved?
Also, WHY ARE THERE NO SCOTTIES IN THIS BUILDING?
Finally, why is there a guy playing a baritone on the corner across the street all weekend long, every weekend. And why does he seem to prefer Simon and Garfunkle tunes? At first it was a fun reminder that we live in a city, but after a few weekends like this, I’m grateful I got AirPods for my birthday.
Everything is so depressing these days.
Except.
When I’m looking at the old people home in front of me, behind me is Swedish Hospital where two of our favorite little girls—Pippi and the Imp—were born. Before Christmas a client dropped off a gift when I handed over a manuscript I’d been editing and she pointed to the hospital with a fond smile and said, “That’s where my boys were born.”
The last few weeks, I’ve twice seen a bald eagle soaring past our building, where normally we only see crows and seagulls. Who knew an advantage of living on the 9th floor of Oh La La would be bald eagle sightings?
And finally, yes, the Capitol was breached but it wasn’t successful. Our elected officials went back to work and the building and grounds crew righted what was wronged. And when I think about the whole event, I’m struck by how it was words that instigated the riot and words—written all those years ago, imperfect but with the intention of becoming more perfect—that allowed us to get back to the business of living. Maybe words really do matter after all.
The Reluctant Girl Scout 