A Year That Will Live in Infamy

The last day of the year has always been special to me.  It was my dad's birthday.  Most years he went to some kind of New Year's party. He always ate pickled herring at New Year's Eve. When I was older we would have family card parties. In my whole adult life I really can't remember ever being at a New Year's Eve party. I have lived a pretty boring life.

But, this year, I won't be going to a party for the new year.  But, I will be looking forward to the new year more than any year of my life. I have moderately high hopes for 2021. It would have to be a really awful year to be worse than 2020.  Not that it isn't possible, but I have high hopes for a better year.

I look forward to a regime change in Washington.  Out with the old and in with the new.  I look forward to the vaccine.  As an over 65, I think I am in group 1c, maybe by February or surely March I will have yet another shot, perhaps one of the most important shots of my life. I look forward to trying some new things, making some changes.  Will I try camping? Get a dog? Travel?

I could sum up the things that happened this year.  I think a personal list is most relevant. I had a new granddaughter in the height of the lockdown. She is a keeper. My grandson somehow turned into a preschooler from a toddler. My sister sprung my 99 year old mother from nursing home lockdown and kept her. (Mom moved in with my sister and brother in law.) I got a couple of parakeets and replaced Scarlet with Jojo. (They are betta fish, Scarlet died.)  I took up walking again.

2020 was a hard year with a lot of loneliness and frustration.  It was a year of fear and uncertainty. The new year will start out the same, but I hope that it just keeps getting better and better. My grandchildren will turn one and three and my mom will be 100 this year! I look forward to actually seeing people again, not just on computer screens. I have been blessed.  I pray to continue in God's grace and love, knowing that I have done nothing to merit the favors I have received. I am learning to focus on the good.