Happy New Year! A new year… What does that even mean?  Should it even mean anything at all?

Life.

I begin this year as I marvel over the ending of the last, with relief, gratitude and renewal that despite moments of sheer terror and sadness the past year did present to me exactly what I always desired… the beginnings of a simple and kind life.

The rest? Is up to me.

I had been reliving memories of a year ago and many years ago and the compounding of too many bad memories of holidays past when I came upon the sight of a friend’s lighted door.  We had instituted a new routine in which we have supper together once a week, her family and I.  Of course there existed kindness and light all along in my life, but in the preceding weeks of Christmas, I needed to relive a bit of what I had been through, if only in my mind and heart.  I had to cry it out, live it, retrace those steps – again, if only in my head.  Tears as I looked at the Christmas tree and tears as I looked at boxes, stacks and clutter in my basement of where the debris of a life exploded had been left untouched for a whole year, only to accumulate with more debris from more explosions.

Until it all stopped.

(I do – by the way – thank G-d for the privilege of having a basement!)

The tears began to subside when I saw their door, lit warmly for me.  Memories of  a life in which I had everything except the lighting of the door to ones own home.  Many years I had lived, driving home after a day at work, dreading the sight of “home” because I knew that even though I was married, I would be arriving to the dark coldness of not that I was not home just that it did not matter to welcome me back from the world.  It was the indifference which was the darkness not the darkness itself.

Such a simple thing is a light by the door.  And there it was.  In the midst of my memories was the return of one which gave birth to those events to follow.  And it was the return of that memory and its resolution that finally made me smile.  Such a simple thing is a light by the door.  How lovely to be welcomed as well as how stunning in its simplicity was that sight.

Writing.

In the weeks that followed I found a peculiar attribute to kindness.  Again, like the return of a remembrance of the daily disappointment at the absence of welcoming, having given birth to the events which finally exploded all of my life, kindnesses flourished.  Even in the busiest of days I began looking for that lamp.  I also tried to make sure I tended to it.  Selfishly though, kindness steered me to a new calm, a new place which I have never experienced through no fault of anyone but my own.  Kindness brought me to resolution.

I am fifty years old.  I cannot view my life now as temporarily single nor a flight of fancy.  I will not (I decided!) live my life writing when I have a chance or when I can synthesize another metaphor which in itself becomes another facade.  I did that.  My life is not a descriptive narrative of itself.  Its my life!  If I write, I must write.  If its as dull as….well, what in life is dull? Nothing!

But kindnesses?

They emboldened me to live.  And…. that I really miss writing.

Buildings and business.

I love the dream of my business and my buildings.  One building slapped me silly from dreams to reality and the other, is finally again, my labor of love.  I struggled during the holidays as I have all along, trying to establish my own boundaries of operations into my personal life and time with my son.  Failing and messing up have become part of the process.  But then there is nothing like getting it right – or better stated – on getting even just a tiny piece of the puzzle correct.

There is nothing quite like buildings which teach me that the principals i have begun to apply to my ‘outside life’ also apply to the debris of my ‘inside life’… aka “Clean your house, Steph.  Take care.  Be kind.”

The whole she-bang.

Hanukkah brought me closer to Christmas… And kindnesses brought resolution.  Realities returned me to my own metaphor of the path of my life.  And solitude erased my own intimate dance of loneliness – one which I felt my whole life.

I only wish the same for the world.

May the peace of loving kindness be yours,

Stephanie

My Mother’s Day violets bloom…in winter… (Blast it! Did I not just vow to ‘no more metaphors?’)

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