In anticipation of 2021

As the year from hell winds up, my thoughts move to what the next one brings. With anticipation.

Well, yes. The world will not magically heal at the stroke of the midnight hour. We will awaken to more or less the same quantities of life and freedom that we went to bed with. 

But the new year will bring some change. Be it in the form of vaccines, or herd immunity, or in the absence of both, an inching back towards a mid-way sort of life. Wherein fearlessly we shall once again charge ahead, armoured with sanitisers and masks, in the way of swords and shields. 

The new year will bring some change. Because we may want to change. To kit ourselves with new attitudes and resolves, some of which will hopefully see light of day. And so what if these flames are short-lived, they will have burnt brightly, and we would be the better for having thought of them than not at all. 

Yes, the new year will bring some change.

I have spent this year compartmentalising myself. Work, kid, myself. Three boxes, made with non-porous material, leakage-proof. But as I see my son grow up, see him add a few more strains of comprehension, new forms of self-expression, every single day, I have hope he will start to understand and accept me in my entirety. It would be amiss of me to not mention that the nanny who arrived in my home two weeks ago, a vision it seems to me at times as fantastical as Mary Poppins herself, will be a key factor driving this merger (of my different selves). I have already had a taste of it as I sit back, feet up, book in hand, having our odd mother-son conversations, while she, bless her, feet firmly on ground, sits poised to chase after him when he tires of our conversation or runs out of vocabulary. I am still getting used to it. I do not want to get too used to it. 

Speaking of odd mother-son conversations, my favourite ones happen in the mornings, just before the day unleashes itself, when both of us stand at our window and watch the world go by. We speak of the trees and the cars, the people and their dogs, the flowers that fall to earth and make it so colourful, catching my color-loving son's eye, and the crows that sit on them wires. In these conversations, I try to pass on the habit of imagination, of wondering where those crows could be flying to, and making up answers that lead to stories that Google search would never throw up. 

I want to continue these, even on days when the clock seems to be running at double speed. 

I recently came across, what was to me, a hard-hitting question. A throwaway mention in a book written by a therapist-author about her life and experiences. This question made me look at myself anew. Who am I? What do I want? What's in my way? 

What's in my way? Many things. Mostly self-created. 

I think I will dwell on this one for a bit this year. 

And I will write. Every day. Not always for public consumption. But never the less. It is a part of me that I have let atrophy. Especially this year as I lost self-expression. Come to think of it, it's not that I didn't have things to say, but some sort of congealment took place, a thickening of sorts; and this mass of thoughts and feelings just sat there inside me like Dalda in the winters. It could not would not thaw.  

And to be honest, I didn't try very hard. I gave it space. 

But 2021 will be different. I will try harder. 

This is not a plan. Resolves? Maybe. More like wishes. Or quick little post-its to myself, to remind myself to look around and smile more often this coming year. 

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