Auld Lang Syne, and all that crap

So it's thirtyseven minutes past ten out here on the left coast, and I"ve been reading the New Year's Auf's from those on the East. Doesn't seem like 2007 was a particularly good year--for anyone. I, on the other hand, despite the fact that my twenty year marriage went belly up and I've been unemployed for longer than I expected and the value of my house went down and my car blew another tire and...and...and...it doesn't seem like such a bad year to me, in retrospect (and I'm sober as all shit). I don't know whether I'm too full of Prozac or that mad bout with death five years ago really had a lasting effect, but I'm just seeing stuff that happens as stuff that happens. Nothing more; nothing less. And so I'm excited about 2008. It seems to me to be the first time I'm really in charge of me. Which means--wow! learning what me wants. Now that is a new and different tack.

So I'm going to bed and tomorrow will dawn, tra la tra la. I'll hie over to Knitique for the annual New Year's Knitting Extravaganza, which begins at six a.m. I don't expect I'll be one of those waiting for Danielle et al to unlock the door. But I'll traipse in around eight or so, and I'll knit some and wander through the store and buy more yarn and books and maybe a thingie to learn to spin. I am still working on my bag of goodies from last year's sale--but I'm also almost done with several projects that have been hanging around for, oh, nine or ten years, so I'm entitled, as all the knitters will atttest.

Goodnight and god bless (small g and large G), in whatever way you think best. I'll see you all anon and anon and anon.

When Your Words Catch Up With You...or, My Face Is Red, but My Heart is Full

Yesterday was Wednesday, and Wednesday night is late night at Knitique, my LYS (knit-speak for local yarn shop). Knitters have a propensity for communal activities. It's part of our DNA, so to speak, from the days long ago when no woman worth her salt or not would be found with empty hands. Women's work in all those Jane Austen novels was needlework, and if you recall, they could always be found in front of the fire somewhere with work in hand. But--I digress.

So, yesterday was Wednesday, and Wednesday night is late night at Knitique, when a revolving, evolving group of us gather around the table in the back of the store and knit and talk and eat pink M&Ms and knit and talk. Most LYSs have something similar; I've been to a number. Never have I found one where I went back again and again. There's a Yiddish word, gemeluchkeit

I wrote that a couple of weeks ago, got tripped up on how to spell that Yiddish word and never posted it. I was going to tell the story of how embarrassed I was when my friends at Knitique greeting me after a post in which I had lamented the lack of hard-core, graduate student, jargon-laden BS in my life. They just hooted and hollered and yelled at me in faux-yokel dialect. At first, I was confused. Then I realized--omg, they read my blog! I was pleased, embarrassed and then, perverse though it may seem, felt an overwhelming love for this group of women who have become my friends. One of my core issues has always been that I'm not being truly seen, but these women--they see me.

I'm writing this now because I spent New Year's Day with them and it couldn't have been, I feel, a better, more propitious start to 2007. Danielle, the owner of Knitique, has started a New Year's Day tradition: a 6 a.m.-2 p.m. deep discount, wear-your-PJs sale of everything in the shop. I didn't get there at 6, but at 12:30 everything I wanted was still there. So, I went 'round the store with two shopping bags and loaded up. I bought yarn and books and felting needles and more yarn and...and...and... You'll see everything over the next months, I promise.

But it wasn't the sale that made the day so special. It was the women there. Danielle, of course, and her sister, Lisa (we discovered we were kindred souls!), and Teresa and her daughter and Kim and Shirley. There were some Knitiquers missing--Mary and Susan (who was home with her week old baby) and SJ and Nancy and....and....and...you get my point. After the shop closed at 2 p.m., we went to On The Border and had margaritas and dessert and then dinner.(Yes, you read the order right.) We laughed and talked and shared stories and made plans and...and...and--if this presages the best of 2007 for me, it promises to be a fantastic year!

On the First Day of Christmas....

...oh, wrong holiday.

I've just gone through the last three years of New Year's Day posts and they're less than scintillating. 2004--nothing; 2005--photo of my nephew and cousin; 2006--ah, this was the year I came into my own as a blogger. On January 1, 2006, I offered photos of the goose I cooked at Christmas (to be known forever more as either The CSI Goose, or The Only Goose I Will Have Ever Cooked); a little tidbit about the Rose Bowl, and a link to something about Camilla and Charles' wedding in which I made a prediction. I cannot be more specific about these last two, as I'm just not interested enough to reread them. Was I then? Or did I think that such links were what would make a Real Blogger of me? I suspect the latter.

I have no resolutions because I make them at Rosh Hashanah. And break them at Yom Kippur.

I am now in my seventh decade. Doesn't that just scare the fucking shit out of you (she says mostly to herself)? Particularly those of you who have resolved to quit swearing (yes, you over there with the Red Stapler). I would like to tell you that living all these years has made me a wiser woman, but--t'ain't so, McGee (that, I believe, is a cultural reference to a radio program from the 30s or 40s--I picked it up from my mother, who would be 98 this year).

The fact is that you are who you are no matter your age. It's kind of like that adage: you take yourself with you wherever you go. I don't know that stuff gets better; maybe you just don't care as much. Some days I accept who and what I am; some days I want a do-over.

I can remember looking at a photograph of my mother when she was a young woman and being amazed at how beautiful she once was. Didn't she mind, I wondered, getting old. When she looked at herself in the mirror now decades later, didn't she care terribly that she no longer looked the same? I think I asked her, as well as I could without coming out and saying, "Don't you just hate that you're no longer pretty and young?" To me, at that time, aging was a tragedy.

From this side of the mountain, however, it's not. Oh, I am not thrilled with age spots (for which Esoterica does nothing) or crepey skin or errant facial hair. But they don't define me. Somehow I have always had friends who were much younger than I (is this a sign of immaturity, that I play better with the little kids?), and I'm coming to realize that the age difference is more of an issue for me than it is for them. What is it that I'm nervous about?

Okay, here's the tell all. I'm scared of looking like a fool. I'm scared of being one of those old women who dresses like a kid. I'm scared of people saying about me, "why doesn't she act her age...find friends of her own...stop bothering us...stop thinking she has anything in common with us..."

Here's something I wrote, a poem I guess, dated August 20, 1973. I can tell from the paper I wrote it on that I was sitting in the Newsroom at the BBC. Make of that what you will:

To retain my cool at
any cost,
That is my heart's
desire.

For my biggest fear
in this whole wide world,
Is looking like a fool.

Thirty-four years later, what has changed? My biggest fear now, I'd have to say, is how much that little ditty still governs my life. How much I have sacrificed to not looking like a fool.

I think there may be a resolution in there somewhere, but as I said--I don't do them this time of year.