Year, New, Happy

Yes, I know 2020 has been over for several days now.   At my age my literary reflexes are a little slow.  Besides, 2020 has been a Year like no other, a year that requires some examination before moving on.  Oh, it started out OK … my wife, Muri, and I in a beautiful new home in our new home state of Utah, a few miles from our daughter’s family.  Selling our California house then moving had been an ordeal, and we’d lost my beloved Tuxedo cat, Claude, to cancer but shortly after arriving in Utah, we adopted Tyson, another lovable Tuxedo,  So on January 1, 2020, Happy New Year just rolled off the tongue.   But February of 2020 brought the first news of a pandemic and in May, a breast cancer diagnosis for my wife.   There would be surgery and chemotherapy and radiation (still going on) for Muri, and an out-of-control spread of a new virus until, at the conclusion of the year, more Americans had died of COVID-19 than in World War Two.   An incompetent, divisive president who’d managed to stumble along for three good years could not (or would not) deal with the pandemic, and  what would follow was the most divisive election in my life time, a national scene that for the first time made me wonder whether democracy can survive.  That was 2020.

(Old) Year, (New) Year

Last night, over the dinner that never came (more on that later*), I asked my wife Muri if she thought 2018 was a good year.  She surprised me when … without hesitation … said, No.  It is a characteristic of my wife that I love, except when it bugs me: she doesn’t mince words.  Me?  I can be a word-mincer when it comes to quality of life.  Twenty-five years sitting in 12-Step meetings have instilled in me a tendency to look for the positive and to practice gratitude, even in difficult times.  It’s not that I don’t see the bad things that happened in 2018, believe me.   We lost one of our dearest friends.  Our son made no progress toward self-sufficiency.   My business went into hibernation.  I have had more than my share of aches and pains, culminating with sciatic pain that has me limping around for the first two hours of the day.  But we have a small cadre of friends who accompany us on this journey, some from afar.   And we may ache and groan but we have an active life, not by car-commercial standards but theater and movies and concerts that make perfect dates.  We have the cutest grandkids in the world (yes, I’m biased).  A few business opportunities may still blossom and if they don’t, we’ll be OK.  And we have each other.  If I were to give 2018 a letter-grade, I would give it a B.