Already written on the New Year

In that moment 12 a.m. strikes

 

on the first of the year, the new page is pristine. I was in Big Bear for that moment, watching the new glitzy ball drop at the vacation home of a Newport Beach plastic surgeon and his wife, all teak wood and warm fireplace, teenagers against adults in a game of charade. And the moment passes in a flash and life begins its writing, in staccatos of happy and sad, urgent and leisurely, mildly annoying, and majorly annoying. . . .you get the idea.

In my little life up to here and the lives of those with whom I associate, the 7th of January of the new year 2008 a few events provoke a little of each mood--on the first day of mail after the holiday, one of those photographic gotcha tickets. Yup that's me frowning in the driver's seat and that's when I did not know that I was being watched. Yup that's my license. But I didn't go through a light! I was turning right on red. That's allowed right?  I let the pedestrian go before I did it. So why did I get a ticket? I am putting off thinking about this until the "video" of my violation is on the website and I can look at it in its full big brother narrative.

I kept my beloved girl cat alive through the holidays, although looking back, I probably wasn't doing her any favors, but on January 3, there was no more to do, and no hope for even another short term revival. I stroked her, remembering her so recent seeming vibrance, while the doctor nudged her from coma like state to death. Today, I ordered the birch box that will be her resting place now that she is cremated. I must pay the $160.30 to the pet cemetery folk before she will be released to me.  For a while I will look at her picture and miss her, and then this box will join the other two somewhere behind a cupboard door. I am considering a more prominent location that I will see, but will not be an imposition on any visitor to my apartment. The other two bruiser boy cats that are left behind, don't seem to notice she is gone.

Yesterday was the Epiphany of Our Lord, January 6, and I found out that my pastor emeritus, a friend, a complicated, good man, has been in the hospital since last weekend. Pneumonia. Falls he cannot afford. The tubes are out now. I met him when he was 55, nearly the age I am now. He is 81. I have always seen him as a permanent fixture. None of us are permanent fixtures, and that is hard to accept particularly in a fresh New Year, when all things seem possible.

My father, who has been having a "wee bout" is doing better right now. Today, he took himself for a haircut at a little place across from Canter's. Bus. Walking. For a man of nearly 90 that is quite the feat and he needed to accomplish it. I needed to let him.

I have taken off for a couple of weeks, apparently, other than the previously mentioned weekend trip, without much on the agenda, except sleeping late (a favorite) and errands, the errant prayer, and considerations of what else a New Year might bring.