Another Year? Let's Go!
The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is a strange time of wondering whether we’re in one long holiday or in-between two. I’ve heard it called the “Witching Week,” and I like that. We’re mostly free of the tyranny of work, and the fridge is full of various classes of leftovers so we don’t have to cook for a few days. It almost feels like this interstitial period doesn’t count against our lifespan.
Three of our four 20-something-year-old “kids” stayed with us for a week, which was wonderful. They’re visiting other relatives now and returning to their regular lives in Kansas and Utah, and Susan and I have the house to ourselves again. We can eat and drink whatever we want, sleep until ten, and wear slippers all day. It’s a time to think about what the past year has done to us and start planning our attack on the next one.
It’s a good time for getting things done while the rest of the world hangs suspended in this weirdest week like the candied peaches in Maw-maw’s fruitcake. Now that the annual deathwatch over the waning year is over, “should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?”
Not without at least some cursory examination.
I read some good books, visited family and friends in Florida, Kentucky, and Texas, and got pretty close to finishing a major writing project that I still hope to wrap up before January.
Susan and I half-jokingly toss around the term “ailments” thanks to Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel Prize-winning novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. As in,
“Hey, how about emptying the dishwasher, changing the sheets, and flipping the laundry?”
“But…my AILMENTS.”
After avoiding COVID-19 long enough to develop a subconscious hubris about it, it finally caught up with us. I suspect I caught it at a local barbershop. On the bright side, I was incapacitated for only about 24 hours thanks to having kept up with vaccinations.
There are aches and pains like the old Achilles’ tendon injury that comes and goes, seemingly randomly. But as I approach my sixth decade, I can’t complain (Sometimes I still do.). My back bends, and I can still run five miles and knock out 12 pull-ups before breakfast. I take nothing for granted, but I’m optimistic for a long healthspan.
In family news, our children have been out in the world, on their own, for long enough that Susan and I are getting used to living in this big, old house with only our dog, Biscuit, to care for. Of our four children, one daughter is pressing toward her PhD in astrophysics, a son is nearing the end of his enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corps, The other son, an electrician’s apprentice, and daughter, learning carpenter skills with the AmeriCorps-funded Community Rebuilds, both live in Moab, Utah, less than a mile apart.
We lost our 13-year-old dog, Dexter, in August. He spent his last moments on a towel in the grass under a crape myrtle tree. White petals drifted down all around us. We love dogs so much, despite that they’re never with us for long. They teach us things we’d never know without them.
Another 2023 highlight was finally acquiring a second kayak. Suze and I can get out on the lake together now, and it’s great. The first challenge was transporting it; my Toyota’s roof rack isn’t compatible with any sort (Believe me, I searched.) of off-the-shelf kayak rack. So I went to Home Depot, bought some steel hardware, and made one in the garage. It works!
I realize as I’m writing this that I haven’t done a good job of tracking the books I read in 2023. I’ll do better this year. I estimate that I read 25-30 books, not all of them worth mentioning. Here are five I found memorable, in no particular order:
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin - Video game developers Sadie Green and Sam Masur, inspired by early video games like “The Oregon Trail,” create and escape into their own virtual worlds while breaking our hearts in the real one.
The Mabinogion. This collection of 11 of the earliest Welsh stories was compiled in the 12-13th centuries from oral traditions. It’s full of medieval heroes, romance, and fantasy. The stories don’t all seem related, and the structure is quite strange, but it’s fascinating to absorb a bit of what it might have been like to sit around a fire in 13th century Wales listening to a bard recite these tales.
I read All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy, years ago while stationed in Italy and resolved to read it again someday. The language is beautiful. The setting is vast and unforgiving. The characters are real and powerful. I plan to read the rest of the Border Trilogy this year: The Crossing and Cities of the Plain.
Premee Mohamed’s No One Will Come Back for Us. This is a collection of stories along a science-fiction/fantasy/horror genre spectrum. Not all knocked my socks off, but some truly resonate and leave me with an enjoyable feeling of dread and wonder.
Bananas, by Peter Chapman, is a disturbing history of the United Fruit Company—the origin story of how the banana became the popular and lucrative crop it is today. It’s the history of America’s exploitation of “banana republics” and how a few rich men in Boston ruled Central America like kings for decades. Where’s United Fruit today? They rebranded years ago to Chiquita Banana.
I’m currently reading The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese. It’s a big, beautiful book that spans most of the 20th century, set on the Malabar Coast of South India, and it follows several generations of an Indian family with a “curse.” Once you’re in, you’re in. I’m taking my time with this one. I don’t want to miss anything.
I won’t say much about my writing, except that I am writing fiction. I’m feeling more of a sense of urgency as I get older to finish a book, so I didn’t work on short stories in 2023. I have two unfinished novels and a novella I’m determined to finish soon (18,000 words—the end is close.) I’m working on a deliberate time management system to get the most out of the time I have, focusing on study, writing, music, physical fitness, maintaining important relationships, and generally clearing for action. That is, replacing time and energy spent on habits and people that aren’t beneficial. If I’m fortunate enough to have two or three decades of life left, I hope to fill it with art and joy and meaning.
The world is always burning. Wars in Africa, Europe, and Southwest Asia. Times are hard for young people trying to get started. And, it’s an important election year in the United States during which we’ll have another opportunity to save our democracy. Or lose it.
So keep your head up, and let’s enter 2024 with intention, determination, and hope. Work hard. Love hard. Walk in the woods. Hug people. This is the life.
Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year.