New Year, New Decade, New Day

My mother used to say that whatever a person does on New Year’s Day will indicate what that person will be doing for the rest of the year. Mindful of her words, I have all my life avoided doing things like laundry, paying bills, or coming within aural distance of zydeco music on the first day of January. If today is any indication of my coming year, I will be living like a kaiser. We slept in after falling asleep last night in front of a mellow fire in the stove, arose in good health and spirits, and feasted, thanks to Mrs. Orr, on a regal brunch of eggs and biscuits and homemade sausage gravy. I’ve been dipping into Isak Dinesen’s/Karen Blixen’s short story collection Winter’s Tales. The birds have discovered the new eatery now open at the back deck and have been crowding in for a look at the menu and the decor. I sat in the woods for a while and listened to the high wind in the bare trees and watched it move across the Clinch Mountains like an unseen hand smoothing the nap of a velvet drape. Then I sat at Bonnie’s grave for a while and told her some things. When I looked up, cows had gathered at the fence and were watching me. One of them was Number 14; I first met her back in the hot weather.

We watched the Tournament of Roses Parade from Pasadena, California on the RFD-TV station. It’s the last bastion of proper parade commentary. No hip-hop, grandstanding, Broadway caterwauling, or double-entendre remarks by oily fourth-tier celebrities. Just respectful commentary about the high school bands and the stunning floats — all constructed from botanical materials and representing hundreds of hours of work. One of the commentators noted that the average age of the American farmer is 58. This is a barometer of the times. Young men are abandoning the family farm for the Facebook page. Farming is, after all, grueling and largely thankless work. There is no glamour in those dusty rows or those drafty barns. There is no excitement in those stacks of bills and invoices. There is no certainty in those potentially destructive clouds gathering on the horizon beyond the fields of grain and produce.

Washing my hands with pineapple-scented soap in my bathroom, I felt gratitude for running water, for the little Texas girl in the kitchen, for my once-combative and now arthritic knuckles, for our new grandson, for so much. I watched the old rustic in the mirror and thought a prayer up to Him Who Watches. I don’t want a fight. Maybe You do. I don’t know. But You’ve got it pretty good with me. You should be pleased with me, for a lot of reasons. I dried my hands and as I snicked off the light switch, decades of dark accumulated teaching lay heavy on me, and I said in a trace of a whisper to my own image, “I am not a worm. I am worth something. I’m here. I’m not groveling and I’m not apologizing any more.”

I wonder if He might construe my words as picking a fight?

Happy New Year to you, my treasured few readers. May your homes and your hearts be warm and blessed in the coming days and months.

~ S.K. Orr