A New Pair of Glasses

Well, it finally happened. My glasses broke. This was not a great surprise to me since I have two small sons who love pulling them off my face, but what with it coinciding with the new year, it is hard for me not to view this (pun intended, sorry!) as a metaphor. Off with the old and on with new sort of thing. Time, once again, for reckoning. Which, frankly, is all that I feel I've been doing since late December, and will continue to do for another week or so. My youngest son's birthday is late December, mine is very soon, and my older son's is mid/late January, so what with January 1 stuck in there, too, every year at this time, I have a nonstop month of "Look where you were before and where you are now." To be honest, it's exhausting. Not that it isn't joyful, too. It is nonstop cakes and parties, and I can't think of anything I'd rather do than celebrate my sons being here, but the four opportunities right in a row for me to reflect on time/life passages is a bit much. And I'm not even mentioning the other family and family-like members (okay, 5 of them) who celebrate at this time, too. I can only wonder if the Universe (yes, I did live in LA for years; I have anthropomorphized the Universe) thinks that I am particularly dense and need 4 tries to get this new year ritual right. Whatever it is. Because it changes every year. For the longest, and grimmest, time, I made lots of list. God save me. There were lists for everything, so certainly there were lists for the new year. What I would do, have, create (yes, this was in LA). Then sanity somehow descended, or would it ascend? And I stopped all of that. No more lists. And the amazing thing was that life got easier. More organized. I stopped feeling behind before I even got out of bed. But this year (please yell if you hear insanity approaching, I really won't mind), I am taking a tiny step back (or should that be forward?) to a list. But I am calling it the Non-list because it will never be written down where it can become its own terrible identity and taunt and tease me until I tear the goddamn thing up. In March. So there is no list, just the Non-list, a kind of internal what-I-feel-like-moving-towards thing. And so far, so good. But I'll let you know. It could fall apart tomorrow, though somehow, I think it won't. But either way, I'll still have a new pair of glasses. Until those break, too.
xo