2019 – a year so far in the future it doesn’t seem possible that it is here. 2020 sounds like healthy eyesight. 2019 sounds like a Star Date. To somebody who will turn 76 in a month, anyway.
I begin the year one brother short. As I chronicled in another post, my little (68-year-old) brother Paul became very ill and made the courageous decision to just let go on his own, which he did on December 18. At home, in his own bed, surrounded by his wife and four grown children. I’m told he was able to enjoy one last beer. I will be performing a Releasing Ritual at the Celebration of Life next weekend. So I suppose that means my new year is beginning on a low note. Still, I maintain that my sibs and I always were and always will be six, and therefore one.
This January of 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of a trip to London that I made with my university friends, Jan and Vicky and Tom and Dick and Jerry. I'm kind of amazed myself - just how we took London in, the three - or four or six of us, depending on who came along. There were 6 in the core group, but the three roomies - me and Jan and Vicky - were in and out of tube stations in a flash, up Oxford Street, back round Piccadilly, into this club or that theatre or meeting everyone for drinks or dinner. I can hardly believe that was me, so long ago, and I miss my companions, and tears come when I realize that we don't even exist anymore. Not the group that came to London and fell in love with the city and each other. I have to find a story for them. They deserve a good story. It's the only sure way to find them again. So perhaps that is something that I will do this year.
I also finished the last of five short stories that I am happy enough with – very happy in a few cases – to send off for possible publication on Amazon. Airs Above the Ground, A Song for Huddlestone, Tricky Dick and the Dragon Lady, The Good Daughter and After the Rainbow – a quintet of fairy tales that could only take place in our world but alas, probably didn’t. London, at this distance, seems more fairy tale than real, and I hope I can do that story justice.
I’m looking forward this year to watching C-Span 1, the channel for the U.S. House of Representatives, as Nancy Pelosi guides her caucus through the next two years. The hearings alone (Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, and Maxine Waters in particular) should be interesting. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez shows promise, as do many others. There will be disappointments, of course, but I think, I hope, that overall they will show courage and determination, no matter how many bills McConnell throws back to them. If at the end of two years, nothing important has been accomplished, it should be obvious who is at fault.
Finally, it is less than six months to the first Democratic debates, and just about a year to the Iowa Caucuses. I’m not settled on my candidate/s as yet, but I do know this much. I want, at the top of the ticket, two people who have a very good shot at 16 years of governing between them.
So, with one bitter loss behind me and a good wallow in nostalgia for the way we were once upon a time in London, I’m as prepared for what’s ahead as I’ll ever be. As soon as I get the tree undressed and out of the house, that is. And what’s this? A left-over cookie? All right!