When my kids were little and we’d have particularly bumpy days, I would say, “Well, tomorrow is a brand new day with no mistakes in it!” I feel that way about the start of a new year, too. I was told a few days ago by a friend that the start of a new year is really just another day, we don’t have to celebrate or even commemorate it if we don’t want to. But I want to! Inevitably, I find myself spending the last few days of an old year putting away the holiday decorations, cleaning out closets and cupboards and dumping the last of the holiday leftovers from the fridge. I dust, mop, stack and sort and when I wake up on the morning of January 1st–I see an entire year stretched out ahead of me with no mistakes in it…
Now, I just want to go on record as saying that I don’t necessarily think mistakes are a bad thing. Life’s most poignant lessons come from the bumbles and stumbles. But, isn’t it delightfully optimistic of us to envision the new year like a chubby new baby–all possibility and mystery. I can’t help but remember myself as a new parent with that first smooshy, fresh baby–boy, was I going to do everything fabulously! Well, in reality, my children and my motherhood has been shaped as much by my “mistakes” as by my triumphs–just as I expect the coming year will be a wonderful soup of challenges, mistakes, success, new adventures, carry-overs and repeat lessons, and blessings (some obvious and some well-disguised.) Still, this morning–it is a brand new year stretched out like a blank canvass.
I like thinking of the new year as a new baby. I can relate to that. As a parent, I know that a new baby signals the beginning of a new era–time can be organized and digested based on births and family additions. While change is inevitable and constant, beginnings and endings deserve to be commemorated (even if they really are the same thing–an ending is always the nucleus of a beginning and a beginning ascends from the ashes of an ending.) So, hurray for a brand new year with no mistakes in it!