It Won't Look Like This Next Year

On time passing, holding on, and learning to be here now

Here we are — the strange in-between week, after the holiday madness has quieted and before the frenzy of resolutions, commitments to transform and improve our lives. Always aspire, never stay still. Always do more.

It’s funny, I’ve been thinking lately, how uninspired and ironic it is that our society encourages us to spend, celebrate, spare no expense, make the magic, attend the holiday events, pack it all in — and then, a week later, strip it all away. Purge the stuff. Toss the cookies. Shed the weight. Improve. (At least the exterior, never mind what’s going on inside our bodies or minds.)

It’s easy to spend time inside the yesterdays and tomorrows — the what once was and what could be. It’s hard to be here, right where you are. Where you want to be, or maybe where you’re trying to escape from.

Is that what all the distraction of planning is for, anyway?

I am a deeply nostalgic person, and I kind of hate it about myself, because I get lost in memories and then fear I’m missing out on building new ones now. It’s how I’ve been for as long as I can remember. Taking too many pictures. Too many videos. Glimpses — tiny fragments of life as it was — and then, all at once, everything is different.

Like the subtle change of seasons you only notice when the tree outside your kitchen sink window is starting to grow bare. Or when the sun fades beneath the seam where the field meets the sky a few minutes earlier than it did last week. There’s a chill in the air that makes you shiver, and you realize it’s time to reach for long sleeves, pull out the winter hat bin, and bundle up.

When did the season change?

When did my three-year-old outgrow his favorite pair of sneakers, and why haven’t I let go of them yet?

When did he start enunciating the color yellow correctly instead of declaring it “yeh-yow,” and why does that make me so damn sad?

When will he stop saying “scawwy” instead of scary, and telling us he “wuvs” us?

When did my baby girl start the toddler scoot back into my lap, and why is she so heavy on my hip? I completely missed the window of time for that cute floral dress in the back of her closet that still has the tags on it. It’s size three months. She’ll turn two in April, which is basically tomorrow.

I know next holiday season will look completely different for my family — and for yours. We can’t freeze the ones we love as they are, preserving the shade of their hair, the feel of their hand intertwined in yours, the health we take for granted, the crinkles at the corners of their eyes when they smile that big, genuine, happy smile.

And that’s a good thing.

And it’s a devastating thing.

And two things can be true at once.

Next year, my big boy will start school. He’ll be on Christmas break, and we’ll be (unsuccessfully) dodging strep, flu A, and every other illness he’s bound to carry home in his tiny backpack. The days won’t feel as long and sprawling. They’ll be structured. Scheduled. Organized by drop-off and pick-up and class parties and dress-up days.

They’ll be marked by the rush and bustle that school ushers into life — rolling into organized sports, first dances, after-school activities, jobs. Busyness.

Maybe for you, next December will look like making magic for your kids.

Or welcoming your child home for winter break.

Or welcoming a new baby into your family.

Maybe it will look like missing someone who is far away. Or someone who is unreachable. Maybe it will look like grieving an unimaginable loss, or navigating an unforeseen diagnosis.

I say this not to prompt worry or fear, but to reflect on the only sure thing we can count on: unpredictability. The constant change and motion that means we are alive. That means we are here, now, feeling it all — the good, the bad, the bittersweet.

I hope you find time in this in-between week to reflect. To be still. To be here. To find the good in your now, and to release a little of your fixation on yesterdays and tomorrows.

I hope I can, too.