ProetryPlace Blog 39
One Day, Perhaps
Okay gang, listen up. We had our fun last year. Now it is 2014 and time to get serious, return to the routine, pay the piper, or more precisely, the MasterCard, Visa and Discover statements the USPS has been delivering day by day. It was fun shopping for loved ones, finding those special, surprise gifts. Well, at least Dolly enjoyed it, but she leaves the mop up operation—paying the bills— to me. Still, it is as hard to swallow the price of our holiday-induced magnanimousness as it is those few remaining crusty Christmas cookies.
And who could resist those family holiday meals—nosh on tempting snacks of cheeses and sausages, chips and dips, sliced fruits and salads, munchies and mimosas for hours, almost unnoticed amidst the fun and conversation before sitting down to the baked ham or turkey and trimmings and at least one slice of the three or four desert choices? But who can suppress the groan of dismay when the scale reveals the extent of our penalty for casual gluttony?
The first chill of winter, the first snow flakes, the serenity of waking to a hushed white landscape—occasions that we greeted like old friends—are beginning to feel like house guests who have overstayed their welcome by several weeks. We have taken down the tree, packed away the decorations and bright lights, heard at last the final strains of chestnuts roasting and merry gentlemen. Now what?
It is January, the time for looking forward and the time for looking back, like Janus the two-faced Roman god of gates and doorways and endings and beginnings for whom the month is named. It is a time to take inventory and restock shelves. It is a time to pause and parse, reflect and project, a time to plan the future. It is a time when colorful garden catalogues are gleefully perused, a time to think ahead to when the snow has melted and Persephone has returned to spread the glory of springtime on the land. Dolly is already making out her Easter shopping list.
It is tax time too. The 1099s and bank and broker statements have started to arrive. I will not be a volunteer preparer for the AARP TaxAide program this year, but I have purchased TurboTax as my personal tax adviser, and will soon install it on my PC. Meanwhile, I rummage through the statements of what we paid out in medical and drug expenses, what taxes and interest we paid, what contributions to charity we were able to make that can count as deductions, off-sets to our retirement income. TurboTax will ease the calculation of how much to pay the IRS and tell me when to do it, but it won’t abate the pain of this springtime curse, this April anathema. (Another Season Spent, page 61)
What of the future? I will aspire to some things outside the bounds of our mundane though reasonably comfortable daily existence. What new adventures will Dolly and I be able to attempt in the coming year? Do we have another voyage left in us? The travels we have made were wonderful experiences and yielded lasting memories, but travel has become a bit more difficult now and our hearts are not often far from home. Still the open road calls out.
I will write. Writing is no longer something I can do or not do. Writing is a part of me, a physical function as essential as eating or drinking or you-know-what. (The you-know-what may be a better analogy for writing.) So much is yet undone—the long-neglected family history, many memoirs, my next volume of poetry, illustration and possible publication of my one and only children’s story. The list grows rather than diminishes.
I will study. I will read. I will learn. As essential as writing, and not unrelated to it, is poking about various esoteric caverns of human knowledge in search of new enlightenments, new understandings. Will this thirst for knowledge, for intellectual and spiritual growth ever end?
One day, perhaps.
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