Forget-the-Year!

It's New Year's Eve. No drunken revelry here. No fireworks. A yummy seafood meal sits in the fridge. Snowshoes and ski poles perch on the hearth, ready for a late-night trek to welcome the coming year. Resolutions, including that of more time at the gym, hover. To the dog, though, it's no big deal; it's just one more day.

I gather my Martha Stewart "Living" magazines for January, almost two decades' worth, to see what an astute home-keeper like me should be doing. Yes, Martha tells me, it's a time for purging, renewal, discarding, affirmation. It's quite the magic time, this precipice of leaping out of an old year into a new.

This is Japan's biggest holiday, full of "Forget-the-Year" parties. Given 2009's sorry fiscal report card, this makes sense. Who'd want to remember 401K statements with smaller balances than those at inception a decade earlier? Who'd want to re-run the unemployment figures, the equity dives, the crazy crookedness of CEOs charged with shepherding our funds? Not me.

I'm all for forgetting some parts of the year, but not all. I do NOT want to forget Ozomatli concerts with my daughter! Ozo's music and presence soared us. I do NOT want to forget time with my mom and my uncle, vibrant, engaged, charitable, graceful. I do NOT want to forget running with my golden retriever: we found new trails in the most common spots in this town. Who'd ever suspect these little wilderness areas exist within city limits? I do NOT want to forget getting my poetry in print. Don't care if I make money: just want to share my words. I do NOT want to forget the many miracles that greet my every day. How blessed I am. How very blessed I am.

For the new calendar...yes, I resolve. I'll be better. I'll try harder. I'll work longer, sustain more, grouse less. Yes. I resolve. You'll see.

Not one to forget the year that's passing, I'll welcome the new one like an old friend. "Come on in! We have so much fun ahead of us!"