A Brand New Year

Listening to Grace Potter on the way to work this morning I realized that it was the first time in a long while that I didn’t feel the urge to skip her on the iPod.  I’ve talked about but have never written about the Grace Potter Conundrum.  I don’t think I will get into it much now either – suffice to say that I couldn’t listen to her music at all over the last few months.  That sucked.  I was pissed about it on the regular. Grace was my musical muse, my white Tina Turner, the other woman in my life.  But every time I heard one of her songs (and still), in my mind I saw you dancing in the grass at Atlantic Station that night at the free show.  I was so very proud that you were mine.  I think I posted a pic on facebook, glowing in the after of your spectacular.  Now you’re gone and the underlying yet overpowering theme of 2011 is illuminated.  I was waiting for the other shoe to drop even then, you know?  Being run over by a train, even one that you can see from months away barreling down the tracks in slow motion still hurts.  You can’t brace yourself for that sort of calamity.

I should have known that last year was going to blow as soon as I woke up New Years Day 2011 and my truck wouldn’t start.  A minor inconvenience really, but I see it now as a talisman of the long line of bullshit that would follow.  It’s no secret that 2011 got the better of me – beat the living shit out of me really in nearly every way. 

That was last year.  This is a brand new year now and if it’s not what I expect or what I feel like I “deserve” I don’t think it can get worse than last.  Accepting that has made this first week of the new not only tolerable but damn near exciting.  The fruit is ripe with hope and promise.  That’s a good thing.  I’m over the sad bastard bullshit that I allowed to consume me for too long. 

Last night, or the night before that – I won’t say which night, I resolved to not make a New Year’s Resolution.  Yeah I know I’m a tad late on that ritual but timeliness has never really been my strong suit.  I didn’t think about it all NYE.  365 days prior I was like, “Somebody give me a glazed doughnut…and a bottle of anything!”  This year on New Year’s Eve I chose to do as close to the opposite of last as I could think of.  I stayed home alone (just me and the dogs), stayed stone sober, made a big skillet of peppers and sausage and watched football – I was fast asleep before half-time.  It was nice.

2011 crawled back to hell where she came from as I napped.  Shortly after her departure, I was startled from my slumber by the strangely calming report of automatic gun-fire.  Guns blazing in my neighborhood aren’t always a bad thing.  Few, if any of you, will understand that but it makes me feel at home.  Everybody celebrates differently – who am I to judge?  It was surprising this time only because I had never been at home on NYE before. 

I had witnessed celebratory gunplay in the hood though.  The night Obama was elected was like the 4^th of July, New Years Eve and the Falcons winning the Super Bowl all rolled into one glorious (if somewhat terrifying) urban symphony of gunshot call and response that lasted for more than a few nights in the EAV.  Some of my neighbors clearly embrace their constitutional right to bear arms more than others (and apparently shoot them haphazardly into the night!).  I understood.  At the time I was happy as well, but I don’t believe in guns and/or firing them in a public setting – but again, who am I to judge? 

This night after a short while, the pop-pop-pop receded and I felt like it was cool to let the pups out.  It took a while to coax uber-neurotic Belle from her crate but she was happy to be frolicking in the moonshine when I did.  I sat there on the back steps burning the night-cap smoke and for whatever reason fell back into my memory vault to when my grandfather passed away.

This is a man who over the preceding months had watched the love of his life waste away to nearly nothing and finally succumb to cancer.  The nursing home had allowed their beds to be pushed together and he was holding her hand when she passed.  I wasn’t there at the time but my mom told me after that Grandpa simply said, “Mom’s crossed over”.  Mere weeks later as he was about to make the same journey, he still had the wherewithal and unbreakable spirit to be positive.  I was too young then to realize what a statement he was making to me about how to live a life.  About how not to feel sorry for yourself.  About how to pick yourself up off the mat when life kicks you in the teeth, dust yourself off and face the next day.  That is exactly what he had done his whole life, and even at the end of that life he was determined to do it again with the next sunrise.

The last thing my grandfather said to me as he lay dying was, “Tomorrow’s another day”.   He didn’t live to see it.  As I carried his body through the snow from the hearse to the grave I thought about what he had said.  Shivering; ankle deep in slush, in long johns under my cheap suit as he was lowered and the snow fell, I made a silent promise to him that I would live up to his expectation of who he thought I was and who I might become.   20+ years have passed from that day to this and I still don’t feel like I’ve fulfilled that promise.  I’m still trying. 

If I’ve learned anything from this past year it’s that the sun will rise tomorrow no matter how crappy the day before might have been – if I’ve learned anything from my grandfather, I know I have the balls to face it. 

Though it is easier to tell myself, I’m not foolish enough to believe that 2011 was some random cosmic conspiracy against my house or my will.  I own the responsibility that’s mine.  I didn’t make the best choice too many times and I allowed the circumstance to control my reaction.  I only now realize that action not reaction defines a man – I too often, simply failed to act.  Regardless, 2011 is in the rearview and 2012 is a brand new year. 

I’ve been granted the option to make this year better than the last.  I have a choice everyday when I get out of bed what the day will become.   I can control it or roll with it or allow it to bring me down.  I won’t always win, but I will always continue to fight.  So be it.  “Tomorrow’s another day”, right?

The fruit is indeed ripe with hope and promise.