We didn’t count down to midnight this year. The stars should have been aligned – my parents were staying with us and our youngest is old enough to stay in his bed after good-nights. Well, more or less. We could have had a lovely New Year’s Eve at home with my folks or even take them up on their offer of babysitting and hit the town. But we didn’t. Instead we took the gift of a quiet evening and, after finishing up some home-keeping kitchen work, we headed to bed.
(If we were having coffee together right now, you and I, I’d tell you about how the Spouse and I had been out ridiculously the night before New Year’s Eve at the late screening of Star Wars – a date! – and I’d probably go on a bit about rare date nights with the Spouse and maybe even a bit about Star Wars. There’s lots to say about me and Star Wars. When I was a kid, the neighbour boys made me be Princess Leia, sitting up the tree house waiting to be rescued. Dreadful. I hadn’t seen the movie and I hated being a princess. It took me a very long time to figure out that Princess Leia would never sit in the tree house.)
Midnight doesn’t matter. It’s just a moment, a named moment, a symbol. These are handles that helps us hold on to something fleeting. In his 2011 Massey Lectures, Winter: Five Windows on the Season, Adam Gopnik observed that
“time passes, inexorably, and the hold we have on it is often simply the distinctions we make within it – the names we give each moment.”
So it isn’t the moment, but the naming of the moment that is important. As this week begins, I want to name a few moments from our past few weeks.
A remembering moment: My father stood in church beside me, and I watched his face while my daughter tackled her first Christmas of descants and my father remembered his days as a boy chorister, Sing choirs of angels.
A moment in the middle: We sat together at a small cafe table, my mother, my daughter and I. Three generations, three women enjoying eating jammy scones and sharing stories.
A late-night moment: My children were asleep in their rooms and my husband drowsy beside me in our new bed in our new house, when I heard my parents talking. Not their words, but only the sound of their voices reaching up the stairs. Lying in the dark, listening, I was six years old again. And home.
Time passes, inexorably, but let’s name these gifts as we glimpse them. May your new year be filled with good gifts like these and clear eyes to see them.
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This post was meant for last week, but the Spouse gave me the wonderful Christmas present of a guest post, freeing up a little bit more time in my Monday to spend with my parents.
Another gift of the season has been another slice of Record space – you can find the first of my new columns here or via the Front Page of this website.
