Today, January 1, represents the ultimate in invisible-yet-not-imaginary lines. When I woke up this morning, it was snowing, just as it was last night. (That's snow from January, 2006, at left.) The morning chores have been the same today as they were yesterday. Morning TV is still on its holiday (meaning fluffy) schedule, just like yesterday and the previous two weeks. Aside from turning a new calendar page, an activity that actually happens at least twelve times a year, today isn't all that different from yesterday.
But it's also completely different. We've crossed an invisible line. For me, the "new year" in January is a mental construct. Yes, it approximates a new season, the switch from gathering winter darkness to the approaching light of spring. But autumn, with its release from the heat and humidity of Oklahoma summers and its new academic year, has always been the real "new year" for me. The solstice has less meaning in my personal history than the equinox, so it's harder to adopt as an emotional new year.
But this year may be different. This year, the change from 2007 to 2008 has more meaning. Last year was excellent for me in many ways (wedding) and hellish in others (father's death and dissolution of the family home). Of course, I'm not alone in having good moments and bad ones in 2007--it's been a difficult year for many soldiers' families, for example, and for families in occupied territories, and even for some families in Thunder Bay. My own highs and lows in 2007 were perhaps more extreme than those I've experienced in previous years, but each year has them. It's unreasonable to expect that 2008 will be radically different from the norm--say, 2006 or 2002 or even 2009.
Unreasonable or not, though, turning over the page of my calendar to one that says January 2008 creates in me a new sense of optimism. At last the 2007 Dickensian year, with its estates and its deaths and its improbable happiness in the face of it all, is finished. A new year is beginning. And in 2008, as in 2007 and every year, the deepest shadows and most blinding flashes of brightness both bring rewards, even when I forget to look for them.
