#77: good morning, happy new year

a poem

Good morning,

today is my first day at my desk
since early December as
in the last 4 weeks:

we hosted baby’s first holiday season
by the sea
with both sides of the family
(and felt like the grown-ups).

we took a road trip
through Utah’s otherworldly expanses,
felt the simultaneous sovereignty and isolation of Navajo Nation,
visited 5 national parks
red and brown
desert and canyon,
with baby and dog
(who shared oatmeal and peanut butter and bananas on the way).

we celebrated first birthdays of chosen cousins
in the mountains
attempted to make sugar-less baby cakes
for which the coconut frosting would not whip,
witnessed the choices tiny humans make with hands and feet
and how at 10 and 11 and 12 months old
they play in tandem
(but not together).

we came home with fevers
and new teeth
and the ability to protest
against oatmeal and yogurt
accepting only
star-shaped crackers
and icy mango.

we discovered the weird world
of childhood viruses
that appear from nowhere
with bright red rashes
and then disappear,
like magic.

along the way, I, mom
managed diapers and chapped cheeks
collected half-eaten bananas in all my pockets
wrote 2000 words of a really tough chapter
that had been haunting my sleep for weeks,
did laundry in 3 different kinds of machines,
whispered endlessly to my phone in bed
so the AI could capture my inspiration without waking the baby,
and washed my hair maybe 5 times in 4 weeks.

I learned that
there’s tired
and there’s happy-tired,

and any choices you make
while happy-tired,

are the right ones.

A, two years old.

---

this year,
rather than thinking about time
as something that is coming,
something to conquer,
something filled with potential,
I find myself
looking at time as a container
a treasure box
a place where things happen.

---

a year could be:
9 months of growing a tiny human
plus 3 months keeping him, and yourself
alive and fed
as you both rest.

a year could be:
a feeling
a perspective shift
a settling in of an identity
a group of friends
a place you feel at home.

a year could be:
a collection of things you loved,
memorable meals
new kitchen additions
finally learning the perfect grocery routine
so vegetables never spoil.

a year could be:
a great letting go,
a season of loss,
finding companionship in grief
and then healing,
through new friendship
a tiny, secret desire
or the smallest bit of hope.

a year could be:
8 great chapters of a project begun
mentorship
revision,
throwing it all away
coming back
seeing the light.

the past few years have been many of these things for me—
how about you?

---

this year,
I want to enjoy witnessing life,
all of it,
all at once.

I want to witness the joy
of first steps and first words,
alongside the loss
of faculties and autonomy
from the in-betweenness
of middle age,
while protecting the fight for life,
within us all.

I want to honor
the pleasures of living in a state
of sunshine, innovation and ocean fog,
and the simultaneous terror
of its fires and fault lines,
dancing beneath a motley crew of
bickering preparers and avoiders,
dealing in privilege and attachment.

I want to own
my private friendship
with the page,
immerse myself
in its contours,
bask in our affair,
invite new words in,
but define less.

---

this year,
I’m not sure
that I want to charge toward a future
armed with intention and desire
as I used to.

but I am sure
that I want to dig beneath my feet,
sprinkle the earth with seeds,
and tend to the lives before me.

T, ten months old.

Happy Tuesday,

Jihii