And So Life Goes On

As 2012 drew to a close, and everyone waited to see if the world might really end, I just wanted to know where a new year might be going.  My daughter decided that there wasn't a high enough probability that they were right and she studied for her finals anyway.  Good decisions, since her high school was still standing on December the 21st.  And so life goes on.

There's always a prediction that the world is going to end.  There's always someone who believes that they know the exact moment we are all going to cease to exist.  What I know is that someday I will cease to exist, and I don't really care to know the how or when.  Life goes on.

2012 was a weird kind of year.  I don't believe in karma per se, but I started 2012 so angry, so confused, so fed up with life in general, it's little wonder I had the start to the year I did.  In January, I got hit by a car.  That sounds so momentous, but really, it was just a car backing up in a parking lot - they didn't see me, the bumper clipped me, and I got knocked onto the sidewalk.  Once I regained my bearings I even thought, "that was it?  I thought being hit by a car would be more serious than that."  I walked around sore for a couple of days.  And then life went on.

And on, and on, and on.  And I didn't enjoy a single moment of it.  I was racing around preparing for Katie to graduate from middle school and move into high school.  I moved out of my house and brought my girls to a townhouse across town.  I lightened my life.  A lot.  I threw away, gave away, stored away all of the stuff that has been weighing us down.   We spent so many years accumulating stuff.  We don't need it - it just makes it too hard to clean the house anyway.  I got rid of cable and made our television a "for DVD only" zone.  We cleared out computers and extra furniture.  I bought a new bed - first piece of furniture that I really bought on my own, for myself.  I learned how to do things for myself.  Some nights last spring I was so tired, I felt half dead.  But I didn't die, and life went on.

I watched Katie graduate, and not being a person to bawl in public much, I still teared up a little bit quietly.  Life does, indeed, move on - faster and faster every year.  It doesn't seem all that long ago that I brought her to St. Francis for the first day of school.  She was 18 months old.  So cute.  So tiny.  I watched her grow up on that campus, and watched her learn and change and make friends - and lose them.  I watched her learn some painful lessons.  And suddenly, that phase in her life was over, and I have a student in high school.  I used to roll my eyes when my grandmother warned me it would happen this way - time going faster and faster.  But it does.  And I felt like somehow my 30's had gone by without my even noticing.

I'm not one to be hung up on age.  It's just a number, after all, and some of my best friends are 20 years older than I am, or ten years younger.  And I don't think a thing about it.  But what did really hit me was the way that number snuck up, and the feeling that I hadn't had enough joy or experiences or...anything...to show for it.  Life goes on.  And we should enjoy it.

So, I started some new things.  I took a road trip by myself across country.  I allowed myself a few hours to really cry, and then told myself that I was done with that.  I saw some things I had always wanted to see, and some things I hadn't planned on seeing.  I met people and talked with strangers.  Danced with an elderly Zuni man in a convenience store in New Mexico.  I walked in the rain and nearly drove my car off a mountain in a wild summer storm.  But I didn't, and as frightening as the twenty minutes or so of driving through that storm were, there was a feeling of great satisfaction in having safely negotiated my way through it and seeing that dark mass of clouds in my rearview mirror as I pulled through Santa Rosa.  I spray painted a car in the middle of a cow field, watched fireworks over the Amarillo sky, and watched the sun come up over a desert.  And I could have cried because I have wasted some time over the last decade.  Oh, not on the important things I do - like my kids, or my job - but on worrying, or choosing easy over adventure, or choosing staying in over friends sometimes.  Anything worthwhile generally takes some effort.  I am not much one for resolutions, but I resolved to make some effort.  To do the things I've always said I wanted to do, but never get around to doing.  To let go of some fear, and to try new things in life.

I started with one thing I have always wanted, but never had the nerve to do.  I got a tattoo.  Now, I'm still me and I did some research on where was the best place to go, didn't get a tattoo I couldn't cover when I want (or need) to, and followed all the care tips carefully.  But I decided fear was not a reason to not go through with it.  All of that, to find that it really doesn't hurt so much after all - as the artist said, "you wouldn't see all these big tough guys walking around with them if it really hurt that much.  women are tougher than men about pain."  I think he's right.  We have to be, afterall, to bear and care for children.  So, cliche aside, I got the tattoo I had always wanted - a dragon - on my back.  It's not huge, but I know it's there.  Sometimes now when I get nervous, I think of that, and remember I can do anything I want or need to do, as in "heck with that, I've got a dragon on MY side."  Life moves on.

Katie started high school.  I started putting together another phase of my life.  I've thrown caution to the wind a few times in 2012, and I've had some wonderful experiences.  I've made new friends.  I've had some moments of which I am less proud, but I value the experiences just the same. Sometimes because they taught me something about myself, sometimes because they helped me get closer to another person, and sometimes because it was fun as hell - even if I should have had my head examined.  2012 was weird.   But it was a good start to a new decade in my life.

I don't make New Year's Resolutions.  But I did resolve to start 2013 in the spirit of my life going on - in the best, most fun and still safe and responsible (because I'm still me) way as possible.  Life doesn't end because you get hurt, lose a friend, fall out of love, have someone you love die, or just become unhappy.  Life moves on.  You can move with it, or be carried by it.  I started 2013 by getting another tattoo (and no, most of you will never see this one either).  This one is a compass - to remind me to always know which direction I'm headed and make good choices along the way.   But to keep moving.  Life goes on - go with it.