Happy New Year

Snow this morning, beautiful and full, waiting to be shoveled from the stairs and sidewalks. (I'll skip the driveway!) But I want to stay in bed a few more minutes . . . hours??

Last night, I bid 2007 good-bye by dropping in at a party at the church and an open house at the home of two members. I went to Club MI for midnight revelries, and sat with fewer than a dozen men--a little sad, it seems--to welcome in the New Year.

I was hoping to go to a party in Detroit last night, but felt I didn't want to risk it, once the snow began. Likewise, I had planned to attend a party this afternoon in the detroit suburbs, but the roads have not been cleared and I'm giving that a second thought.

The last week of 2007 was a relaxing and intimate one with family. I flew to Providence on Christmas Day, missing my plane after my car's battery was dead and I needed jump from a neighbor. Arriving in the evening, I exchanged gifts with family and then went to bed in my mother's bed. (She took the rollaway.) In the next couple of days, I spent time assisting my brothers as they took down a sappy maple; I tried to get ma's computer connected to the internet via cable modem; and I put in a splitter to get cable into my mother's and sister's bedrooms. 

I was happy to go to an Indian restaurant on the East Side with my brother John, in town from his Lubec, Maine home. We then took a long walk around the Brown campus and environs. With nephews Eric and Phillip, John and Paul and I went to see "I am Legend," enjoyable in spite of a rowdy group of teens in the audience. And with Carol and her beau Brian, we went to Town Pizza . . . a real Riverside respite.

I had planned on catching a train to New Haven or Boston to visit New England friends, and finally was simply unable to do so. I was tired, slept in most days, and really enjoyed some "down time" with Ma. A good time to think and feel and re-charge.

I'm listening to a Carolyn McDade CD from a decade or so ago; one that helped me in the first year of recovery from Leonel's death. The CD, "As We So Love," opens with a choral setting of one of Carolyn's solo numbers from the previous decade, "Ancient Love." No matter how many times I hear it, it always makes me cry.  Here it is, for you . . .

"This Ancient Love"

Long before the night was born from darkness,

Long before the dawn rolled unsteady from fire,

Long before She wrapped her silent arm around the hills,

There was a love, an ancient love was born.

Long before the grass spotted green the bare hillside,

Long before a wing unfolded to wind,

Long before She wrapped her long blue arm around the sea,

There was a love, this ancient love was born.

Long before a chain was forged from the hillside,

Long before a voice uttered freedom's cry,

Long before she wrapped her bleeding arms around the child,

There was a love, and ancient love was born.

Long before the name of a god was spoken,

Long before a cross was nailed from a tree,

Long before She waved her arm of colors 'cross the skies,

There was a love, this ancient love was born.

Fateful our night, slumbers our morning,

Stubborn the grass growing green wounded hills,

As we wrap our healing arms to hold what Her arms held,

This ancient love, this aching love, rolls on.

--Carolyn McDade