As I thought back over 2008 this morning in the shower (an excellent contemplative space) I realized how much of a good year it was for me. I started out the year with a good job and a nice apartment; in March I went to Italy to see Carla, and in April I got into grad school. During the summer I spent many an evening with Heather drinking cheap riesling and eating pizza from Vas, and then Sean and I got engaged and managed to do half our wedding planning during the summer months, including moving our date from two years away to one. Finally, in the fall I moved to Philadelphia and started grad school. Really, this was a great year (and no one died, which is always a major plus). No complaints.
When I look back in the future I'll always think of the period from May 2007 to August 2008 as the transitional year or so, when I was just kind of treading water, waiting for the rest of my (academic) life to begin. I thought I'd miss Shelton, the same as I thought I'd really miss Fairfield, but I don't. I've found myself pretty adaptable to new circumstances, which is always the subject of jokes between Sean and I, as he is famously resistant to change and adapts slowly and uneasily to a new environment (example: see our torturous attempts to find mutually acceptable sleeping arrangements, subject of many a late-night argument as I fail to understand why he must occupy the entire bed, face down, limbs akimbo, forcing the other occupant to either curl up into an isosceles triangle or fight back against the encroacher).
But I do like Philadelphia, and it didn't take long for me to consider 213 E. Sedgwick my home, just as 46 Cliff St had been before it. 51 Whitney seems a long way in the past, now. Sometimes I count the years in terms of how many my mom never saw; it always surprises me to remember that she never saw 2007. I've found myself so many times imagining what she would say to this or that, what she would think of where I'm living now; I imagine giving her the grand tour and the way she would nod with that little smile of hers, not really saying anything, just quietly approving, and of course, how eager she would be to get back in the car, where Rocky would have his face in the window, and go home.
It's always difficult for me to play the what-if-game with my dad, to imagine how life would have been if he hadn't died. He was so much more the polarizing figure in the family, and I was only 14, still pretty malleable in terms of the future. Things could have been--would have been--wildly different, and I'm certain it would have been worse than the way it was without him. It seems a terrible thing to say, doesn't it? But I think of how angry and depressed he was, the fights we had, and how often I told myself I hated him and would never be like him, and I look at Jen now, who had a harder time with him and has still never forgiven him for, as she tells it, making her feel bad about herself every day. I never felt that way, and even if it's true I know that was never his intention. For every time he was mean or made me cry over some little thing, I remember a time of him telling me how smart Jen and I were, how we could do anything if we wanted to. I know he took out on us the stress he was under and the way he felt he'd failed us, which was never true anyway, and I forgave him for that a long, long time ago. It makes me feel sad for Jen that she won't let go of that bitterness, and that it's poisoned her memories of him, even the happy ones. I know he loved us, but I can't prove that to someone who doesn't want to believe it.
It's easier with my mom. She was there for college, she knew Sean, she saw me become the person that I still am--a far better and less bitchier daughter than the one my father ever knew. If he came back now he'd hardly know me. Conversely, I knew my mother better than I ever knew him, even if she was and will ever remain a mystery. So it's her I mentally inject into my new life, wondering about what her opinions would be about things.
I don't believe in a divine plan for human life. So often in hindsight it's tempting to see a pattern, to discern the guidance of some force where there is none, but I no longer attribute the timing of either of their deaths, the curious way in which things seemed to work out, to some larger cosmic scheme. I was fortunate. That's all there is.
I spent a lot of time in a post that's ostensibly about the past year talking about my parents, but I'm always thinking of them more at this time of year. Every year that passes carries me one year further from the time that they knew, as if they were frozen there, in 2000 and 2006, with an outdated version of me. Someday I will have changed so much from when I was 20 that I'll realize that my mom, too, would no longer know me. Or maybe she would have always known me; she was my mom, after all. All those years I was observing her, trying to figure her out, maybe she was observing me right back.
So here's to 2008, another good year, another year of being alive. And here's to 2009: may it live up to and exceed the bar set by its predecessor.
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