A New Year

A new year. A new day. Like everyday, a chance to wake up, be new, do better, live passionately, care deeply, learn more, speak gently.

But unlike anyday, the new year brings with it the pause for reflection.

2010 will be missed. It was a momentous year for me. I had a strong feeling of arrival this year. The realization this year that somewhere along the way I had stopped straining to figure out who I was and had just started being it. Not just tossing ideas around in my head about who I am, what I should do, should be, want to do, want to be. Just being. Being in the present. Still mindful and ever-questioning, but no longer straining.

Maybe it was the move to what I can only foresee as being our family home. Maybe it was getting a job that fulfills my childhood aspirations of what I thought I would be when I grew up. Maybe it was the birth of our fourth baby, and surely our last?

In 2010 I realized how much had happened in the last 10 years. From an 18 year old trying to be an adult, to the 28 year old who feels like I've actually got there. My 18 year old self would be shocked if I had seen what the next 10 years held for me. I may have ran screaming in the other direction.

7 addresses, 5 vehicles, 4 babies, two houses, and one degree. Our wedding. One miscarraige. 10 Jobs? Probably more. Two Vanier cups for Troy, and one degree as well.

In ten years, I've hosted at least 15 kids birthday parties and changed roughly 16000 diapers.

Wow. 16000 diapers?

We've attended at least six funerals, celebrated at least six weddings, and watched 2 family divorces unfold. Which feel like a death in the family. Illnesses and injuries, health and fun, losses and wins. Deadlines. Stress. Mistakes, learning, and growth. We've been through empty bank accounts and big payments. Celebrations and holidays.

We've watched first smiles, first steps, first falls, lost sleep over transitions, out of diapers, into big beds, out of naps, into school. We've watched understanding spark, words form, readers bloom.

And through all that, we're here. We sit cozy on a New Year's morning. It's peaceful. We're okay. Through the crazy rollercoaster of ups and downs, the rythmic and familiar merry-go-round cycles on. In hours, days, seasons and years.

I can't wait to see what I will have seen when I'm 38. What I will have done in ten more years.

It's awe-inspiring.

To quote a friend who quoted Longfellow this morning:
"Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear, and with a (wo)manly heart".

Onward to 2011.

I'm so excited to see what happens next.