As the Whorl Spins

Well, Jane, it just goes to show you.  It's always somethin'.
                                    
                                                              ~Roseanne Roseannadanna

Here we are, already ankle-deep in a brand new year.  Resolutions have been made, and broken.  Hopes for a better year than the last still linger in the air, though, like the smoke from New Years Eve fireworks.

Here I am, unadorned.  This is me, facing another trip around the sun...

...the real me,  just a middle-aged woman, facing an uncertain future after a tough year, with hope and optimism.  And I'm okay with that.

As it was for so many around me, 2010 was a brutal year in the Boyd Homestead.  We have had deaths in the family, dire medical issues, and financial turmoil.  Friends have been through marital strife, serious accidents, and job loss.  A couple we have known for years lost their 16-year-old son in a car crash three days before Christmas.  There has been fire, flood, and pestilence.  Brutal, indeed.

And after such a year, the new year always gives us hope that it will be better.  It will.  And it won't.  Because with all joy comes sorrow.  And with all sorrow comes joy.  The trick is not letting the sorrow seem heavier than the joy.

For all of the loss, pain, and stress 2010 brought me, it also brought great personal joys.  I got to teach more than 100 people to spin, and travel to places I had never seen in the process.  I was awarded a SOAR scholarship.  I met wonderful new people who have opened my eyes to possibilities I had never before dreamed.  I welcomed the grandbabies of friends into this world.  I spent time with my brilliant children, watching them mature into remarkable human beings.

It was the worst of times, it was the best of times.

After the highs and lows, the stress and the sorrow, Steve and I chose to spend our Christmas cloistered in our home.  We slept when we were tired, and we ate when we were hungry.  We exchanged gifts that were simple and thoughtful.  We ventured out once or twice in the week between Christmas and New Year, to see friends who had been lost in the chaos of the past several months or to treat ourselves to sushi, but otherwise, we laid very low.

I have often joked that my stress level was the only thing that was keeping me upright.  Sadly, that was closer to the truth, and now that I have released all of that stress, I am finding it difficult to get things going again.

But now there is a fresh calendar on the wall, open to the first page.  And already that calendar is filling up with new adventures, and new challenges.  I am off to Las Vegas next week with the lovely and talented Miss Lexi to fulfill a lifelong dream of seeing Cher perform live.  And in February, I will be going to Arizona to teach another crop of new Master Spinners.  Of course, there are already medical appointments and a surgery marked on that calendar too.  With the good comes the bad.

This will be the year that I turn 50 (It's in July, so you have plenty of time to spin and knit/weave a lovely gift...).  I'm getting too old to sweat the small stuff.  So, at this time of resolutions and plans, hope and reflection, here is my promise to myself:

I am going to live this year, and every other, embracing the joys and the sorrows that come my way.  I will live every day in delight and wonder, and face the challenges that cross my path with as much courage and grace as I can muster.

Oh, and I'm going to spin.

You bet your a** I'm going to spin.