2011/2012

My husband bought me a fitness tracker for a Christmas gift this year. It marks my steps, the stairs I climb and how well I sleep. It lets me set little goals for myself and chirps out cheery messages encouraging me through the day. I've loved setting goals for myself on the log, walking 15,000 steps instead of 10, 30 floors instead of 20, earning virtual badges for my efforts. This morning, I was amused at the roundness of these numbers, how I like to track my progress in multiples of 5 or 10, preferably both. A nice sense of completion.

But turn the year at its end over in my mind, and how little of it is so smooth and simple. 365 and something days. 12 months. 7 days. 24 hours. Time runs with sharp edges, trailing odd numbers and primes that I cannot parse into quick little pockets of even-sized memory.

Some things stand out sharper than others. People who are not here to ring in the new year, most of all. Their voices bounce around these edges, popping up abruptly at times I least expect. People who may not be here for the next. Efforts too personal to be shared even in this anonymous space. Parents visiting. Being able to afford material comforts that were unthinkable two years ago. Finding, at last, a glimmer of the person I used to be. The one who listened to the small signs the universe hands out, and trusts them.

Time and memory do not come in neatly multiples of 5 and 10. And so there is no measure I can use to weigh one against the other. A dear one's passing against the birth of my friend's child. Spotting a little sign in a car against the years of evidence that something may not work. I cannot track these things, except by running memory's fingers over the uneven edges of the year that was. Treasuring the cracks, and remembering this, an old favorite quote:

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget the perfect offering.
There's a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

Wishing us all a light-filled 2012, and may the light remind us of good things :)

House guests

Now, I know the way your body relaxes into the couch, the bends of your legs and neck as you lie back to play a game. I'm aware that you're allergic to eggs, and of your firm conviction that traditional foods must be cooked with certain recipes and no other. I've watched your frenzied, last-minute style of packing, the intimate links of your togetherness cemented in these material things. One packs the other's toothbrush, the other remembers to bring the thick socks the one forgets. You, in your turn, remember my anger at being dropped off to catch a flight fifteen minutes after it departed. You remember to save some food for me when I get home, and leave me my space, respecting my home for mine.

I think you would call this familiarity. We have shared a house, shared our lives for a few weeks. Having been fed and watered by one another, our needs attended to and differences overlooked with mostly polite courtesy, we could be said to know one another.

For myself, these facts turn my mind back to other intimacies. The way I know my friend must smile when she sees my little chat window pop orange on her screen. How I know my father will respond to an article I send him. The way my husband and I know what the other thinks in a game of charades or Taboo. The depth of affection in the smallest of our connections. The way our lives resonate with one another,
even if it has been a while since we sat on a couch together, just us and no television.