2017.

Well now here we are, one week into 2017.

I am the type of girl who has always loved blank notebooks, empty paper planners, a stack of unused cards or stationary.  And so I find that first page of the calendar, hanging on the wall that first month of a New Year immensely refreshing; a chance to mentally start fresh, wiped clean and anew.

As life would have it, the magic can never last for long.  Bills still find you no matter the year, work will always raise it's ugly head, tragedy and terrible news stories will creep back into our reality sooner than any of us would wish.  My mother and I were talking over the holidays, as we drove home from running a few errands.  The news of Carrie Fisher's death had just broke and she and I began recounting 2016 - all of its ups and horrible downs, both personally and globally.  Oh goodbye 2016.  Goodbye, goodbye.

Isn't time a funny thing?  It can wane and wax and move so very fast exactly when we don't want it to and then go oh so slowly when we are wishing and praying for it to hurry, hurry, hurry.  The good and the bad moments though, they are all allotted that same window of seconds, minutes, and hours, and oh, how unfair is that?!

As I get older some of the holiday excitement wanes a bit; as I imagine it does for a lot of us boring old adults.  Lately though, I have come to appreciate and love the holidays in a new way.  Because Christmas now gives me something I didn't always appreciate before. It gives me the gift of time.  Yes, the rush of December is manic and there's never enough time to get everything done before 12/24; that won't change anytime soon.  And yet, for the last few years spending Christmas with my Mom, I have been lucky enough to simply get time.  Time with my Mom.  What a treasured gift. Doing even the most mundane of activities when I visit her is still time with my Mom.  Time I don't take for granted, time that I wish I had more of, always.   

I rang in 2017 from Tulum, Mexico on a brief warm weather get-away.  The majority of our long weekend was spent looking at views from our beach cabana, staring out at turquoise colored water, listening to the waves crash, and soaking up a healthy dose of sunshine.  2017 will not be a perfect year; it would be naive to think it won't bring it's own share of heartache and hurt. Still I have hope it will be good and kind to all of us, bringing joy and peace to those who need it most.  I have to have hope.  Without it, this world would be a terrible and dark place.

For the light drives out the darkness.
  
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - Martin Luther King Jr.

 
Happy, Happy New Year to all of you.