letter to the new year
by bam
dear year soon to crown,
as i’ve done before in birthing rooms i will reach out to cradle you, take you in my hands, pull you close against my chest. you’ll hear my heart beating, quietly.
i will study you, be in awe of your sudden appearance, your entrance, your being here. there was no guarantee you and i would meet, and therein is the miracle, the often taken-for-granted miracle. yet, unmistakably a miracle. in every way.
both miracle and blessing, each new year demands my full and unwavering attention. demands the full attention of all of us standing here on the cusp, filling our hearts and our imaginations with promises, vows, hopes, resolutions of the deepest kind.
i count on both hands and beyond the people i’ve loved — loved dearly — who didn’t get to know you. the ones, especially, who missed you by a year, or two — the loss still raw, ever a mystery, one i’ll never solve. they’re the everyday reminder to me that 2017 didn’t have to be in my cards. could have been eclipsed. gone before i got here.
i can’t shake the frame locked in my imagination, the one of my dear friend last march, lying gaunt in her hospital bed, all the tubes finally taken away. there was no need for tubes anymore; they’d been revealed to be false hope, distraction from the inevitable. she looked up at me, asked, thinly, “can you believe this?” her words as much declaration as question. i think of her on the doorstep of death, breaths away from slipping to the other side. i hold that moment. study it. i breathe in her courage, i pray it infuses every last nook and cranny inside me. i pray i live her dying instruction: “practice gratitude.”
i beg you, new-coming year, to be gentle. i’ve a hunch you won’t be. i realize the gentle needs to come from deep inside me. i need to find the holy balm to steady me through the rough waters to come. i’m bracing myself wth double doses of those few things that have proven to be my salvation: prayer; silence; rampant and unheralded kindness; the rapt company of a rare few companions, deep in the act of holding up each other’s hearts.
i will usher you in with all the majesty a new year deserves: i’m quieting already. i’m taking walks in the woods, standing in awe of the crimson flash of the flicker darting from oak to oak. i’m assuming a prayerful pose under the star-stitched dome of the heavens. i awake with the dawn, press my nose to the window, often step outside, watch the tourmaline streaks stain the eastern edge of night, rise up, rinse the morning sky in diffuse and certain light.
i will curl in my armchair and scribble my own list of promises. the ways i hope to be kind. to be gentle. to forgive. to try and try again.
the dawn of each year draws me into my natural monastic state. i would have been such a cheerful monk, walking the moonlit halls, bare feet slapping the great stone slabs, guided by flickering candle’s flame. i would have relished a bowl of bean soup simmered all new year’s eve day. would have sliced a thick wheatberry baton of bread. alas, i’m without monastery walls at this moment in my life, and thus must do without the stone-slabbed corridors. but i’ve beans and bread and bees’ wax. i’ve a heart awaiting the new year, and all the prayers it will stir.
be gentle, new year. be kind. and most of all, be blessed.
what do you pray for in this coming year?
my list of prayers this early morn is topped with ones for my sweet little nephew milo, who broke his wrist quite badly, and who is in surgery as i type. he’s in portland, maine, a time zone away, and i got up early to keep vigil from afar, to keep watch over our little guy, and his mama and papa who are huddled, worried, as they wait outside the OR door.

mr. milo & me, almost four years ago
Oh Barbara. This is gorgeous. And just what I needed today. Thank you for sharing the deep places of your soul and for the beautiful poetry of your words. Heaping the holiday love upon you and yours. Ellen
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thank you, sweet ellen. heaping holiday love, and new year hope upon you too. xoxox thanks for being there at key unforgettable moments. xoxox
Thank you for sharing your beautiful & powerful words…. hugs
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thank you, dear judith, for being here…..
Your heart is a light in the darkness, your words a respite from the storm. I know 2017 will be beautiful. Why? Because you’ll be in it, beloved friend. 💝✨
and you, my sweet heart, will make my 2017 beautiful and safe and oh so tender…..xoxoxoxox thank you for scaffolding my heart.
Such gentleness and tenderness as I anticipate this new year with shaking bones!! So many unknowns! I have to believe, I have to believe, I keep telling myself!
we will all believe in good, and we will believe together, which will compound the goodness. xoxox
I pray for dear Milo. I pray for you and all of your darlings. I pray you comfort, strength, and all you need to keep your table filled with love and tenderness as you continue to garner us with the wisdom and kindness which we need to navigate these scary and uncertain times. I pray for all those things you pray for above, so we may have the strength to do the right thing. Mostly I pray thanks for my blessings, and you are always on that list near the tippy top. xo
sweet, sweet angel, all our prayers for mr. milo carried him through his surgery, and not too many hours later our sweet boy, with a pin straight through his little wrist (and a big old cast to hide it, thank goodness) was busy playing with his trucks in a baking pan filled with wet sand (milo’s mama is a genius, and an art therapist to boot. how blessed is he, are we?).
knowing we’re a table of tender hearts gives me strength, and courage, day by day. it’s a fierce world out there, and we are armed with mighty determinations to not be toppled. 2017, here we come.
day by day, we’ll awake to do the right thing, to wield the love that melts the obstacles….
xoxox
BAM..I love you . Thank you for for your beautiful words
Xoxox
Amy
amy manata, i love YOU! you gorgeous angel. bless your bright light. bless your heart. thanks for swingin’ by — in real life, and here in the place constructed by our wildest hopes.
Best wishes for your nephew’s speedy and complete recovery, my friend. Your beautiful thoughts always resonate. Happy, healthy new year!
what a treat to find you here at the table. it is such a blessing. imagining us with coffee mugs in hand, scattering crumbs around the table, sifting, solving all that matters or perplexes. happy blessed new year to you, and to your beloveds. xoxo
Oh my blessed friend, this is a wonder. Thinking how this spanking new year will be delivering my first little grand girl to our home to snuggle and nurture through through the first dark days of winter 2017. This image wil carry me through. 2016 was a challenge, but I have this new life coming out of it and our son’s new healing path born from it. Gratitude indeed. Thinking of ME at this time last year. The treatment may not have cured, but it gave her time and she lived every extra moment with passion and art. I will be nurturing the moments of 2017 with her prompiting to experience the world through Gratitude. Amen and xxoo ~ you are part of my Gratitude.
how perfect that within weeks you will be nuzzling that newborn fresh-from-the-womb skin, you will be whispering to her all your old truths, your deeply-lived-and-learned truths. blessed baby girl. blessed us who will get to witness. the perfect metaphor for beholding this new year, this one about to be birthed…..
prayers, of course and always, for all your travelers. especially the california boy. xoxoxox and the new mama….xoxox
Thank you so much, Barbara. I was looking at the clock with something between defiance and despair — and that rarely works. Your calm and your perspective about the gift of another year to try is just so.
How right that you should approach the new, new year with the heart of a mother.
dear solo (!), what a marvel and wonder and treat to find you here. i’ve just had the most marvelous time poking around YOUR musings on solo journeys (solo-travel.com/). you make me want to check into a B & B, or an old monastery, or that sliver of a room on ile st. louis. and in the meantime, we will all count down toward the newness, and embrace the heck out of it, defiant all the way. we’ll not let anyone dampen our gift of another year……
Thank you Barbara. I add my prayers for Milo and his parents and for YOU too Dear One.
thank you, sweet nance. i am certain all the milo prayers have gotten him through to today. now, i’m just hoping for his mama’s sake that he will finally settle into a nice long nap. and he can sleep in the new year. merry blessed to you!
No beans this time around but gumbo to be shared with a small group of dear friends. Wish you were here, too – I look forward to the next time(s) we’ll pull up our chairs at the table and talk face to face. Thank you, Barbara, for helping me embrace the year ahead with hope.
ah, darling, your gumbos are the VERY best. the heart and soul you stir into the pot. i remember the year you went about your gathering of ingredients all via CTA bus, from one of the city to the next. it seems willie was a newborn baby that year, or certainly a young one. and the company tucked in your apartment on (evergreen?) was as spicy as the potion in the pot. miss you. bless you. bless your year. holding you in my heart. xoxox always….
Your post was a sweet gift on this very first morning of a new year. I am ready to say goodbye to 2016 and move toward 2017, my year of completion and restoration. I’m hopeful and fearful, trusting and tenderhearted. I shared your beautiful words on my facebook page – my readers will love you.
and, dear lisa, your note is a sweet gift on the second morning of the year, as i click on after a long spell of new year quiet. bless you for stopping by, and for sharing with your soulful readers. yours is a beautiful, beautiful story. may this new year fill you and yours with all the tender blessings that carry us forward……
and thank you….
As I walked from my parents’ house back to my own home late last night, Orion the Hunter and all the other winter constellations shone brilliantly through the cold, dry air — their slow unspooling across your “star-stitched dome of the heavens” taking my breath away, and putting our little lives into perspective. Thanks for reminding us that there is so much to love and to be thankful for. A big new year’s hug to you!
dear terra, i love that as you sweep the sky with your night gaze, you connect the dots and name the constellations. your intimacy with earth and heavens is indeed the wellspring of your poetry. how blessed you are to keep watch from the heart of the heartland. i too was out “feeling little” last night, under the stars, under the heavens. it’s a fine posture for yet another beginning. and, with all our hearts entwined, there’s hope we can keep this holy world filled with a light that won’t be snuffed.
merry 2017. xoxoxox
Dear Barbara,
Your words can steal my breath as they speak to my heart. I’ve had to sit with them awhile. “there was no guarantee that you and I would meet” this new year”. So true, for I have loves who suddenly, and without notice, fell short by only months. One a 49 year old mom of 4, buried just days after Thanksgiving.
I’ve longed for walks in the snowy woods I see from my windows and the standing under the starry sky, but there are broken bones in my left foot and a big boot to keep me from those soul healing ventures.
So I perch by windows and hope to catch the cheery sound of the wrens while I watch the flurry of life at the feeders and content myself with flickering candles while I read and ponder beautiful words like yours. Thank you.
oh, dear elaine, i am SO SO sorry. it takes my breath away to read of a mother of four, only 49……..i am so sorry.
i’ve been feeling all the losses so deeply these past few weeks. and i am so sorry, too, about broken bones in your foot (words that hurt even to type!). the woods will wait for you, and so will the heavens. and in the meantime thank goodness for imaginations that can carry us where our feet cannot. and thank goodness for window panes, against which we press our noses, and watch the world flutter by…..
sending a gentle tender hug. it’s so good to know we can partake of each other’s company — in spirit, and sometimes with the click of a keyboard….xoxox
Thanks so much for your virtual hug and place at the table. Gratitude for you and window panes and imagination are in my journal.
Praying continued comfort light your world.