January 2020

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

-Zora Neale Hurston

I think very often of Hurston’s quote.  And, in the last few weeks, even more than usual.

After a series of years that asked questions, 2019 was (at last) a year that offered some answers.  I described 2019 on Instagram as a year “with blessedly rounded edges.”  And it was.  And maybe the lesson was a simple one, one that’s eluded me for 45 years: just let go a little.  Let things come as they may.  Everything, after all, passes.  Both the good and the bad.

I’m grateful that 2019 was a year of relative smoothness, and whose ease offered some answers at last.  I haven’t chosen a word this year, because none has presented itself.  I’m also not a big resolution person.

But I do have Shawn Colvin in my head, right alongside Zora Neale Hurston (remember, years ago, when I wrote about Doctor Seuss and Mark Doty in the same breath?).

Steady On.

That’s what she keeps saying.  So I will.  And I’ll hope for another year that answers questions.  But if it decides to ask them instead, what I know now is I’ll make it through.