Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe. Stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think Loved more than you know. — Winnie-the-Pooh (Fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by author A.A. Milne and illustrator E.H. Shepard)
Here we are approaching a new year and wondering what 2023 will be like. We certainly got blind-sighted by 2020 and the two years following. We probably learned a lot of things during those three years. Things like you can’t take for granted the things we took for granted. I always thought store shelves would be full and not only could I get coffee, I could purchase the brand coffee I always bought; never considering the idea of toilet paper shortages for a minute. Then there was the idea of mask wearing. At first, I made cute little masks that would match my outfits until it was discovered those weren’t worth the cloth they were written on. Then I bought a package of N95s and they didn’t match anything I was wearing which turned out to be okay because I wasn’t going anywhere anyway. Last week I heard the weatherman predicted extremely cold temperatures to come but as for this moment the sun is shining and that makes everything seem okay. A little sunshine goes a long way to lift the spirits.
Typically, the first of the New Year is time to consider New Year’s Resolutions. I haven’t been very successful with resolutions. There was the very awful year I decided not to buy any clothing for myself for a whole year. The resolution made me miserable and probably some of those around me. I got conniving and asked for gift cards for all occasions so I could use the gift card to buy clothing and that wouldn’t really be like I was buying. The resolution prompted some very unusual occasions.
The year of 2022 has passed with solemn memories and lovely ones too. Going with it you’ll find here the last of the snippets of Celestine Sibley’s writings from her 1990 “Tokens of Myself” that I will share with you:
In Tennyson’s poem about the May queen, ‘Tomorrow will be the happiest time of all the glad New Year; Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest, merriest day’ But you have to admit that ‘new’ has a very promising sound. Anything can happen. Anything can be. Think of all the familiar sayings in which you encounter new: ‘A new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal’… ‘This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.’ ‘A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.’ New birth. New society. New Deal. New Frontier. New World. Of course, there are some bad connotations too, but better not to think of those as we face this unused, untried, unblemished swatch of time.
Here in the Prairie the sun has slipped behind the clouds and what was once a beautiful sunny day is now a typical wintery day with a beauty of its own. The days come and the days go so shall we always enjoy what we have while we have it. To you and yours may you have a very Happy New Year.
Shannon Bardwell is a writer living quietly in the Prairie. Email reaches her at [email protected].
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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