It's Not Really a Circle

In the last few days…

The son of a family friend over-dosed and died.

My 82-year-old grandfather who underwent quadruple heart-bypass surgery four weeks ago has developed a significant staph infection, and he remains hospitalized.

Someone I love took a chance and had her heart broken, again.

My husband’s brother-in-law took his own life.

Meanwhile, my cousin gave birth to a healthy baby girl and my best friend is eagerly expecting the arrival of baby number six. My blog buddy, Pam, is expecting her own bundle of goodness, and I’m relishing in her cautious anticipation of motherhood after shedding too many tears while finding her way through the tribulations of infertility.

Saturday, in Portugal, my sister-in-law attended her husband’s funeral and mourns her children’s father and her companion of 40 years. Saturday, in America, a young man we’ve watched grow up proclaimed his love and commitment in front of God and family as he married with doe-eyed enthusiasm and anticipates his future.

I read with heart-felt relief that one friend started 2009 with a clear breast biopsy, but I’m waiting to find out if another friend is receiving equally uplifting reports. And while I’m waiting, my stepdaughter went bungee jumping in New Zealand.

Like you, I’ve browsed a plethora of resolutions as people continue to mark the New Year with hope and purpose to achieve something personally or professionally, and I’ve found myself drawn to people’s determined posts, to the idea of clean slates and blank canvases, to our vigor to simply live.

Day-to-day we’re handed new beginnings and unexpected endings. I had a grand plan for 2009, but the Market collapse has made impossible what I had intended, or at least that’s what I thought as I started to re-plan and prepare my mind for a certain amount of professional drudgery I didn’t want to endure. Life ends. Life begins. Everything in between is malleable to a certain extent. My own flexibility has been tested time and time again and I realize I’m at a new crossroad that has nothing to do with the New Year, and has everything to do with a new mindset.

More of us are reevaluating family and the simplest of joys. Perhaps as we struggle to stand taller in the face of loss, we find comfort in what we’ve always known-that our children, our families, provide the most honest reflections of what we have accomplished and the merriment we have yet to create.

Several people have announced job losses. I’m finding my clients are struggling to pay their invoices, and I find myself bill-collecting, and wondering, and anxious.

Last night I heard my 24-year-old stepson tell my four-year-old son he loves him, and my heart smiled.

My father figured out how to comment on my personal blog, and it made clear that the universe is certainly off-kilter, shifting, and even the seriously technically challenged can accomplish anything when appropriately provoked.

Baby giggles, kindergarten play dates, a teenager holding her father’s hand while hiking a wooded path, or a mother and son’s tea date at the kitchen table, people seem to be searching for connections, honing in on the celebratory worthiness between generations, and it’s really quite lovely.

I’ve just celebrated my 37^th birthday. It’s awfully close to 40 and the proximity seems unnerving, but the alternative is certainly worse.

This year is already different and full of surprises. The road will continue to twist. I’ll lose. I’ll gain. Most important, I hope I’ll learn. It’s not really a circle, is it? It’s a twisted path, a tempting journey; life is, if we’re lucky enough to walk it with our heads held high and our minds and hearts absorbent—if we’re fortunate enough to love, to be loved, if we have the faintest possibility of a dream.