ON BRINGING NEW LAYERS OF SEASONALITY TO THE YEAR, COVETING RETIREMENT, AND LEAVING A LEGACY OF COLOR COORDINATED BOOKS
Thursday December 31 2020 and Friday January 1 2021
Dear Sarah,
It’s the last day of 2020! — and now it’s the first day of 2021! I started my letter to you on New Year’s Eve and now I’m finishing it on New Year’s Day. A nice Thursday-into-Friday transition time for a letter!
As we’ve turned the corner on 2020 I’ve been reflecting on this out-of-the-ordinary year. Its out-of-the-ordinariness has made it interesting for me. Many extra or unnecessary things have fallen away easily, like a shedding of scales or unwanted coats. There is much about this year I feel sorrow for; other changes have left me feeling fresh and like a layer of obligation has been peeled away — those sneaky externally generated self-imposed obligations. The obligations and commitments that one self-imposes, that others may rely on one self-imposing — those commitments loosened their hold over me this year.
I’ve been thinking about an article by Sarah Miller that I read recently (note that I found this article after rummaging through my brain for stand-out words I could search by, and recalling the author’s coining of the word “facilitrees”: “She brought her own drinks and her own food. We did not go near each other. She relieved herself in a cozy grove of cedars that we named the facilitrees. It was just like having someone over except that I didn’t do anything for her at all, unless you call spraying down a chair with Lysol and putting it outside doing something. It was nice not to worry about anything other than just hanging out. I was glad I didn’t have to go to the store with my mask and see some fellow customers exercising their freedom not to wear them and I was glad I didn’t have to clean the bathroom or the house or continually ask her if she needed anything. I didn’t have to worry if she liked her own food. I just had to sit there.”
This made me laugh, articulating only a short list of the subtle stresses we put upon ourselves in our relationships with others: I made food, do they like it? Does she need anything else? Is the house clean enough? Removing our interactions from our personal spaces and personal lives certainly removes some of the detail of knowing each other — I miss seeing what people put on their walls, what books they have on their shelves, what kinds of mugs and plates and textiles they use — but it’s also nice to remove some of these layers so that when we spend time with each other we are doing just that, sharing time.
As we’ve moved toward a new year, I’ve been thinking about what I enjoyed of this past year. Time made itself more apparent this year than in years prior; blocks of time took on new meaning; I’m starting to think more about seasons, and not just the four familiar weather-seasons of the year. Most recently, the holiday season struck me as a true season. Christmas Day itself is not exactly where the magic lies for me, but the holiday season — the lead-up to Thanksgiving and then to Christmas and the New Year — I very much enjoy this whole stretch of time. Our classical station plays holiday music mixed with regular classical music in increasing proportions as we approach Christmas Day. This year we made foods that required attention over time, or that took shape over time — your 30-day eggnog (delicious, and I’ve marked my calendar for when to start next year’s batch!) and a fruitcake that I basted in brandy every other day for about three weeks — marking a celebratory season in an ongoing way instead of in a single go. Step back in the calendar a bit and I’m thinking about the stretch of time from mid-September until November 1 when I read submissions for a literary magazine’s short fiction competition, a time during which I blocked an hour each day, give or take, to read stories. Having done it for a few years now, it’s a time of year I look forward to, a six-week stretch with a destination of total stories read, layered over my regular days. Reading season, short-story season.
I’ve been wondering how I might bring new layers of seasonality to the year, to time in general. What makes a season? How long should it be? A day, a week, two weeks, six weeks, three months?
I write in a document daily, a sort of diary, though it is not limited to an accounting of the day, and does not even require any accounting of the day; rather, it simply requires putting something down on the page for each day, whether it is about the day or not. (After a year or so in which I performed more of a daily accounting in a notebook, I find this daily document more freeing, less overbearing.) (Funny to look back at my letter to you of December 26 2019 and my words — I’m planning to develop a certain kind of diary for the year 2020, a diary whose particular form I haven’t fully decided — and now to look at my 2020 document, which has grown to 108 pages! I was excited to start a new document this morning.)
You and I have our weekly letters; we write with our friend J every two to three weeks; are there other ways to bring periodic rhythms to the year? I’m thinking about new (additional) writing rhythms, and nascent design projects I let drift to the wayside over the past year, and thinking about how to make sure that these activities that are meaningful to me continue to occupy the rhythms of my days, weeks, months. A six-week block in the spring? A two-month block in the summer? A reading block, a writing block, a stretch of drafts and mockups? Sprouting, growing, harvesting? Stowing, nesting? Gathering, arranging, sculpting? We’ll see!
I liked your description in last week’s letter of a more mellow Christmas Day and holiday season. Alone together is very much one of my preferred ways of spending time with people, too. And as we wrap last year and start one anew together alone, I wish you and yours a very happy new year, and I can’t wait until we might find ourselves together-together again!
Until soon!
Eva
January 1, 2021
Dear Eva,
How fun to write the date atop this letter! My first date line of the new year. Did you have a nice celebration to mark the end of 2020 last night? I am hopeful that you didn’t meet bad weather during your drive back home and that you were home in plenty of time to properly ring in the new year. At our house, we decided to all get dressed up for our tiny New Year’s party. When Simon first saw me in heels and a dress last night, he declared, “You look good but super weird.” Fair enough! The kid hasn’t seen me in anything that could even pass for business casual in months going on years. We played games, ate shrimp cocktail and nachos, and toasted with sparkling grape juice at 9 PM. I can’t think of a better way to spend the evening.
This whole week I have been reveling in the dawn of the new year. New starts are my jam! And this one feels particularly momentous. A couple of weeks ago a friend was telling me that her husband had been making fun of people for being so dramatic about the upcoming end of 2020. January 1 is just another day, he apparently said. Boo, I say. We humans like stories, and the story of the new year is always a powerful one, but especially this year. And in any case, isn’t every day that we socially construct into a holiday or special occasion just another day?
Last week included my birthday among its days, so this topic is fresh on my mind. A special day to me, another Sunday for the rest of the world. This particular birthday I realized that I have crossed a new threshold into another dimension of maturity—rather than finding it depressing that my birthday mostly feels like any other normal day, it just feels right that way. Of course the lives of even my friends and family do not feel any different on my birthday, but this is not something that I recognized as a kid. All throughout my childhood and probably even into adulthood, my birthday felt to me like a national holiday. When it started to feel less so, I remember feeling a little bummed out. I am grateful that I seem to have finally transcended that level of narcissism. Better late than never.
This holiday-birthday-new year week has been long and luxurious without work, school, or really any commitments at all. Starting on Sunday (my birthday), Bill started a habit of bringing me a warm cup of coffee in bed so I can do my morning reading without having to leave my cozy position under the covers. So my days mostly began with an hour or so of reading a book or a magazine. Then we would eat breakfast, walk the dog, and spend the day doing puzzles with the boys, playing piano (after one year with Chopin’s Waltz in A minor, I have finally decided I am ready for a new song; everyone in my family is thankful), and doing important household work like color coordinating our living room bookshelves. (Seriously, this book reorganization is splendid, if I do say so myself. I have even been thinking about how I take some satisfaction in the thought that this colorful curation of books we rarely touch is the sort of thing that would likely last in our household even if I died an untimely death in the near future. My legacy! You’re welcome, family.)
In other words, it has been a glorious break from the daily grind these past two weeks. The days feel long and slow, but in the best possible way. As we both start to dread the looming Monday ahead, Bill and I were comforting ourselves tonight remembering we still have a normal weekend of time left before normalcy returns. Once again, we are reminded just how nice retirement will be. Who are these people who don’t know what to do when they retire? May I suggest a colorfully curated bookshelf or coffee and banana bread in bed? There are so many lovely ways to fill our days.
With that, I am going to sign off and enjoy the rest of this Friday evening. Happy new year to you, my dear friend! May 2021 be full of love and light for all of us.
Yours,
Sarah