a quiet welcome

It is always difficult to be present here and now and this task is made ever more challenging on December 31. We're on the brink of a new year, a new number to scribe on checks and journal entries, an end and a beginning juxtaposed clearly between 11:59PM and 12:00AM.

I ended 2013 feeling anticipatorily absurd: We are committing to do our best and love our most honestly, accepting that we will fail often at this endeavor...Jake and I are opening to a third party the small sacred world of affection we occupy together...We have made a baby. We will share our lives with this little being and in turn be made richer once again. We are letting go of something good for something altogether better.

Those very things happened- the honest loving, the failing, the sharing and the being made richer. Life got bigger and smaller this year. It got frighteningly complicated and hard, while also establishing a clarity I have never known before. This year, 2014, ends in simplicity. I'm reminded of Little Red's lyrics from Into the Woods: "I know things now, many valuable things, that I hadn't known before."

Photo by Sarah Leaman

I know now the depth of our community and what active, love incarnate looks like. I know now the insecurity of misplaced identity. I know now the wealth and comfort which are most important- and, shocker, they are not monetary. I know now the immense and terrifying love of a mother for her child. I know now the admiration of watching those you love in turn love this extension of yourself, your baby. I know now that healing and forgiveness come in fits and starts. I know now that the buttery skin of my baby is my favorite thing in the whole world.

My first act in 2015 will, most likely, be nursing my sweet Alice. In wee, early hours we will nuzzle sleepily together and I will quietly welcome another year of absurdity and revelations. Perhaps that is my entire hope for this new beginning- that it be defined by a spirit welcome to revelations, the quiet and the profound, and that I cling dearly to the gift of those nearest.

Happy New Year-
Kimberly