Island Idylls, Question of the Month, Being Thankful

Island Idylls: Stories of growing up in the U. S. Virgin Islands. This is a repost of a blog from several years ago.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of your life.” That quote is suspiciously similar to; “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

New Year’s resolutions are fine, but I/we should be looking at each day as a new beginning. Each day is the beginning of a New Week or New Month. Anyway, time is illusory and doesn't really exist. It's all in our minds. But I am, like everyone else, a victim of it.

Can you tell? I’ve never been a big New Years person. I think it all goes back to a New Years party my family went to when I was nine, in 1960. This picture shows my mother on the left with her good friend Nora. My sister, Erva,  is smiling big in the back-ground wearing the lei. She was 13 soon to be 14, as tall as any adult. The picture was taken right at mid-night. Everyone is happy and smiling and toasting and kissing and…where am I?

I remember being excited, wanting to help ring in the New Year. It was a big deal. 1960, turn of a decade. Everything, I thought, would be new and different once January 1st showed its face. I think it was the first time I became aware of the change of the year and what that “meant.”

I hung on as long as I could. Probably sometime between 9 and 10 pm I got sleepy. Certainly I was not used to staying up much past 8:30 or 9 o’clock. I was taken to a bed-room and remember specifically telling my sister and my mother to, “Wake me up at mid-night.”

Of course it didn’t happen. By the time mid-night rolled around the party was in full swing. The adults had been drinking and dancing, laughing and talking and Bish was forgotten. I don’t remember getting home. But I do remember the next day I was terribly disappointed that I’d missed The Big Event.

It was supposed to be a new day, a new year. But the business of being a family and doing chores, of eating and washing dishes, making the beds and sweeping the floor, were going on just like they had the day before and the day before that. Nothing had changed.

So what, I wondered, was “new” about it? I came to this resounding conclusion. Nothing. It’s just another day.

Because of that observation I’ve never gotten excited about New Years. Except for 2000. Just how often does a person get to ring in not only a new century but a new millennia? Well, not often. And I had a good time with my husband and friends. We fired off fire-works and scared the donkeys, but that’s a whole nuther story.

I didn’t stay upset with Mom or my sister for not waking me up. And I remember that dress Mom wore. It was white with gold-thread accents. It was probably silk, looked kind of like a sari. I thought she was beautiful. She was and will always be.

Happy New Year.

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I decided to join this monthly bloghop because answering thoughtful/challenging questions is one way to expand one's mind. Hosted by Michael D'Agostino at A Life Examined ,  the question this month is: 

What are some New Year's resolutions you've had in the past? 

Well, as you might have gathered from the above story, I don't do New Year's resolutions. Why wait for the end of one year and the beginning of another to set them? Why not make them as and when you need them? Today, this moment, is all any of us has anyway. So don't wait for that special moment, because it will never come unless you make it so.

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Being Thankful

Today I'm thankful for shelter. 
Lest we forget or pretend not to notice, there are people all over the world who have none.

Cleaveland

San Francisco

The Great Depression

Los Angeles

Syrian refugees

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What are you thankful for? Are you a New Year's resolution maker or do you work on goals year round? Got a favorite New Year's Memory?