New Year

Happy New Year.

2013 was a big year, but all of it was about as personal as it comes. Some of it was awful (medical stuff; we survived), and some of it was awesome (baby girl born two days before Thanksgiving), so all in all it's a year that I can't sum up with "great" or "terrible" or even something as basic as memorable, simply because there was so much I'd like to forget. It was simply BIG.

2014 can't be as big, and that's fine. We're hoping for a basic year: a book release, a new kindergartener, a baby who will smile and walk and maybe talk--all good things, but things that won't strike us at the very marrow, that won't be life or death, that won't have us lying in bed at all hours, staring into the blackness, quiet together, wondering if the next day will bring a precipice or sturdy bridge, a guillotine or a stay of execution.

Wow, that was dramatic. I'll get back to that top-100-songs list any day now. Meanwhile here's a wish:

Really I began the day

Not with a man's wish: “May this day be different,”

But with the birds' wish: “May this day

Be the same day, the day of my life.”

  --Randall Jarrell