A New Year - What That Means To Me

A new year is a fresh start, a beginning. A new year is the continuation of a dream, the next step in a journey. A new year is the end of old, no longer productive thought and action, a time to take stock and redirect our efforts.

I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions. If I want to lose weight or finish a project I've learned the hard way that a list scribbled on a scrap of paper doesn't get me far. Before long I misplace the list and life goes on as before in my normal half-organized, half-spontaneous way of living.

What works better for me is taking a moment to reflect and regroup. Finally in my fourth decade, I'm getting it right. My children are constant sources of joy and amazement. I cry tears of pride each time I witness their accomplishments - the lightning fast run into the end zone for the first touchdown of the game - The look on my son's face as he breaks a board with a flying sidekick - Notes picked out on the piano and finally the melody of a song from my child who's teaching herself to play - Discussing ambitions for college, possibly music school in Los Angeles and daydreaming of the summer afternoon when my oldest walks across the stage to receive his diploma - The sheer terror and joy of watching my baby scale a 30-foot rock wall at the climbing gym.

2007 became the year of personal accomplishment and growth. My career is on track and I'm working on my next book. My personal life is awesome thanks to the love of an incredible man. LifePrints, which started on a whim, has become a source of daily inspiration and joy. I've made some incredible new friends who share my ambitions toward writing and changing the world one person at a time.

Through the posts I've written, I've learned so much about the resilience of the human spirit and the goodness of the human heart. Each day, I'm more convinced that we will solve the problems facing our world. We are capable. If each of us step up, speak up, and act up...things will change for the better.

I hope to have more this year of what I had last. I hope for you to find a way to your dreams. I hope for the world that suffering ends and true living, instead of just surviving, begins across our planet.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

In The Moments Before Flight

Life is filled with simple joys, moments of clarity that are gone in a flash. I have to remind myself to stop, take them in, letting them become part of me and my memory. Simple moments of pleasure with my teenage son are few and far between. His time is precious and divided between friends, work, and school. He's almost eighteen, ready to burst onto the scene and be his own man - so family takes a backseat. That is just as it should be, as it was for me when I was eighteen, itching to leave my parents house and all I'd ever known far behind me.

So when he came bounding around from the other side of the Santa Monica Pier I had to smile because he was smiling in that wide-eyed way that gets lost as we grow older. He held a napkin in his hands. Inside the napkin was cold french fries from lunch earlier in the restaurant at the end of the boardwalk.

"Mom, you've got to see this!" He motioned for me to follow.

I'll admit that there are times when I am too busy, too caught up in my own head to notice, to stop the inertia of the day and just follow my children to "go see this cool thing". It's a painful flaw that I'm working to correct. This time we were on vacation. I was relaxed and I saw his excitement radiate across the space between us. "What is it?" I laughed.

"Just come on."

He led the way around the clapboard arcade building to the other side of the pier and looked out over the Pacific ocean for a moment. His face and body relaxed as he breathed in the salt air. He pointed to a group of sea gulls trotting across the sand below us, opened the napkin and took out a fry. "Watch this."

He threw the greasy morsel high into the air. The birds took off like jets. One lucky bird caught the fry in his mouth right in front of our faces. My son started laughing - laughing like he did as a small boy, the half-chuckle, half-cackle that always accompanied the opening of birthday presents.

"Oh my gosh! This is really something!" I yelled as more birds swarmed over our heads. They swooped and hovered close enough to count the leathery toes hanging between the loose webbing of their feet. I saw their stained belly feathers. I'd never noticed how their slick bodies glistened in the sun. I marveled at the miracle of flight and imagined for a moment that I joined them in the sky. I think my son wished to be airborne, too. For a moment he looked lighter, brighter, luminescent.

When the last french fry was thrown and caught, all the birds, except one, retreated to the water's edge. The lone gull perched on the railing in front of us. We looked at him. He stared at us. More food, anything? He waited. We watched silently, afraid to break the spell. Then he was gone and so was the moment of connection to something bigger, more important than our daily routine.
My son tossed the napkin in the trash and leaned on the rail, in the exact spot where the bird had just been. He stared across the beach to the mountains far away. I studied him as I'd studied the bird, silent and still, afraid to breathe.