Sights and sounds pull me back down another year.

So last night’s gathering at my place was great. Despite the strike, more people showed up than I expected, and we had a really good time. Many of the people I love most were there, and that’s exactly what I wanted it to be.

This has been a bitch of a year for many of us (to which it's safe to say that no one among us is sad to bid farewell), and it just felt appropriate on the solstice, at the beginning of a new, hopeful period of lengthening days, to be with the people on whom I’ve been able to lean (and who have been able to lean on me) and celebrate that fact. It was warm, and cozy, and full of wine and good conversation.

I think about one friend in particular, and I honestly get emotional when I realize the extent to which she has been there for me and the lengths to which she is willing to go to lift me up when I need to be lifted. I pray that I am to her even the smallest fraction of what she is to me. Always available, always ready and willing to go out of her way, doing things like driving me home late at night, bringing me a bike when I have a transit-strike fueled meltdown, witnessing said meltdowns and helping me through them with never a shred of judgment or impatience.

These are the silver linings of this difficult year. Deeper relationships with friends. Stronger relationships with family members. Happiness in a relationship that prior to this year I probably would not have been able to enter into.

Posting will probably be light between now and 2006, but you know, go forth singing, dancing, lighting candles in winter trees, and burning those beseeching fires in thanks for life and in hope for peace. Happy new year.

[Susan Cooper's The Shortest Day]