This has been a quiet but wonderful year for me, a year brewing with the anticipation of change. In the spring, I signed with an agent and discovered that Tyler and I would welcome a child into the world. Two events that would seem unrelated if they hadn't intersected and happened at the same time. They indicated a shift, a new way of the wind, and they've carried me to now.
Perhaps I've never been as reflective as I am at this moment, this today, thinking about the year that was and the year that will be. I've spent a lot of time, this year, rearranging words and stories, dreaming them new, hoping they resonate. I've spent an equal amount of time making space inside myself, inside our home, for a tiny someone. No matter how his bones poke and prod and arrange themselves inside me, it's hard to believe he'll be real. That he'll be known.
In preparing for the unknown, Tyler and I cleared our apartment. We had to purge. It was necessity. I got rid of my writing desk which felt like giving away an important piece of who I am even if I know that words can always be written, no matter where.
We found ourselves placing the things left over in closets already too full and three empty boxes, the pretty kind, for keepsakes. Then we watched as an avalanche of generous baby gifts found their way into all the empty spaces, as our apartment flooded with new furniture and gear and gadgets unfurling their miles long instruction sheets.
We like to joke about our three boxes.
Do you know where my pen is?
Did you check your box?
Where can I put my new gloves?
Is there room in the box?
Yes, we cling to our three beloved, crammed, boxes. Some kind of physical testament to who we've been, since the rest of our world and our hearts are already full with the anticipation of new arrivals. I'll admit, it's been hard, wondering how I'll keep those pieces of myself, how those pieces might arrange themselves into someone new.
But it's been a such a lucky year, much of it spent inside the wonderment of what's to come, and I've never dreamed bigger, on so many fronts, even if, truth be told, I have no idea, really, what the year will bring. Maybe only the sculpt of it. The skeleton. But not the soul of it. That's to come.
Happy, happy new year everyone.
