And So Good Morrow to the Waking Year

The Old Year howls as it flies towards its niche in the Halls of History, flinging its anger in cold wet handfuls that splatter across my windowpanes and rattle the door frames; fit weather for a haunting or the opening pages of a gothic novel. I’m sipping a solitary glass of champagne and contemplating a blog. Blogging for Dummies has landed in my lap, the last gift of a year eager to be gone, and I suspect I’m about to be terrorized by technology once again. The Dummies books, by the way, can be very useful – the last time I had one was when I made a snap decision to go to the Middle East for a year and tucked a copy of Islam for Dummies into my suitcase just before dashing off to the airport. That, however, is a different story.

Like a black-jacketed punk swaggering threats from a street corner, technology first mocked me when gas stations went self serve. What a contradiction in terms! I certainly didn’t need to be filled up with gas, my car did. Does the car obligingly snick the nozzle into its own oily mouth? Not a chance. It expects to be spoon fed, like an infant. It was, of course, a night of screaming, mischievous winds and pelting rain. I drove around for some time looking for the blessed words, “We Serve.” No luck. Just before the vehicle sputtered to a halt altogether, I pulled into a gas station, cursing the attendants who were seated and chatting merrily in their warm, windproof booth. With nothing to do, I might add. I looked at the dials and the hose glumly and started fiddling with the controls.

A disembodied voice issued from a loudspeaker. “Pull the lever DOWN, ma’am.” I fiddled some more. “Towards the GROUND, ma’am,” the voice continued. It popped into my head that the Voice of God must have sounded like this after Moses’ second jaunt up Mount Sinai.

As the nasty cigarette ads used to say, though, “You've come a long way, baby,” and I have reasonably high hopes for my blog.

Is there such a thing as grannyblogging? Very soon I will have two grandchildren (not twins: two daughters, two almost simultaneous babies) and I’m full of anticipation despite the struggles of the last few months. As adults, we’re all pretty clear about where we came from but, for some reason, our minds shy away from the thought of our parents actually having sex and, whenever the thought intrudes, we limit their culpability - and quietly comfort ourselves - with hurried head counts of our siblings. I think we’re just as reluctant to think of our daughters having sex. I’m generally a forthright and practical person so, having done my research and determined there have been no recent outbreaks of human parthenogenesis, I’ve bravely faced up to the obvious.

That hurdle behind me, I’m looking forward more than I can say to holding these new scraps of mortality in my arms, blood of my blood and flesh of my flesh. I’m experiencing a real sense of being part of the great wheel of existence that moves us all, continuously, through the ongoing drama of birth and growth and death and renewal.