January is the dreamiest month
by CJ
It’s been a while since I last posted. Most events have slipped onto that ribbon of road behind me, sending life’s minutiae to a receding place too distant to revisit.
I recall that a Christmas tree was bought, bedecked, and admired. That visiting family both graced and improved our fire-lit home. That English mince pies were forced down polite American throats. That someone received the butter dish she’d been begging for. That a toddler bathed in the glory of familial adoration. And that one mother took a daily afternoon nap.
But soon strangers stopped wishing us a happy holiday. Our Christmas tree was downed, dragged away and forgotten. The old year submitted quietly to the new so that guests could return to their homes and husbands to their work. One toddler showed unconcealed joy at being back in school. Which meant that one mother could no longer justify her afternoon nap.
Now, in January, it’s fun to teeter at the edge of a new year and to wonder what all this unlived future will bring. For me, I hope it holds countless naps as well as, ahem, domestic excellence and staggering professional success. Similarly, I hope that your new year shimmers with both noble and self-indulgent goals, and that you get as much sleep as you need.
Like me, your hopes for a gleaming home, a stellar career and a rested body may seem neither practical nor achievable. Yet January is nothing if not the month for unfeasible dreams.
Happy January everyone and happy dreaming.
Thank GOODNESS you got that adorable butter dish. I was SO close to buying that for you last time I was in Anthropologie but I didn’t want to steal Walter’s thunder. I may have to put that on my wish list as well.
We are doing some “January dreaming” in our household as well: Henry wants to read 56 chapter books this year and Sam wants to complete all the Star Wars Episodes on his Wii game. They are dreaming BIG. Happy 2012!
Susie (I still don’t know how to sign in
This was fun to read – you definitely have a gift.
I’m so excited about my year from the looks of it, and I’m starting out by industriously cleaning out all the detritus that ten years’ marriage and home ownership can wedge into the corners of a place. This will leave me in a house that contains the perfect proportions of necessity and gilt, harmonizing together in such a way that clutter (let alone mess) won’t find a way in again until 2017 at least. And I will, of course, NEVER employ hyperbole.
Well put! We’re not sleeping much over here, either, but I like to think that if we were, domestic excellence and professional breakthroughs would follow. When circumstances like sleep dep have such a huge bearing on the rest of life, internationally recognized ‘new beginnings’ can seem like a cruel joke. But even in the blur of restless nights, and piled work and laundry, I see the value and beauty in our potential to start something, or to focus on an ideal, and to orient oneself toward it…remembering that the road we’re currently ON is inevitably the one that leads there. Happy New Year to you and the fam! xo