Ah. The 31st. I already went online and saw summations from 2018. The instinct to gather and look behind is so great. I am a lover of memoir. I understand that. I want to gather what is behind me and make a story that can help me live out tomorrow.
But more than that, I want to glean something from the now. Maybe I’m addicted to being a nowist. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to look back and judge. To ask: what if?
What if everything behind us brought us to the now and no matter if we fucked up again and again there is still joy in the now? In the turning of the biscuit flour. In the frost that decorates the roofs. In the click of the oven baking the biscuits. In these minutes before the girls are awake and no complications have littered my day.
In the complications, there is a memoir. A memoir that lives in my office that I have let go of finishing. (For now or forever?) But both of my hands and all of my body want the right now.
Truthfully, the unknown future often scares me. But the now I can handle. The bounty of all the years we have put effort into to reach the right now. The very sweet right now. The just-turned 14-year-old daughter with two friends sleeping over. They’ll wake up to biscuit: the future. The almost-17-year-old who startles me with both her readiness and not readiness for her own future. My husband who saw me when I woke up at 6 and suggested I drink my coffee and go back to bed. Ah, I did. I feel rested. Ready for December 31st. Ready for just today.