It’s almost midnight. I’m packing up my office because I’m moving to a new one tomorrow. I’ve still got one more class’s grades to hand in, but I’ll do that before I leave here tonight.
Not sure when I’ll be back here to blog because Mom and Dad are in town, Rick and Molly and the boys get here in a couple of days… then I’m off to France to meet up with the French professor mentioned a few posts back. I won’t be back before the New Year.
I am feeling lucky and happy and am looking back at 2005 already, though New Year’s is days off… I like to use this time to reflect, reassess, redirect…
Last New Year’s Eve was fantastic, a breath of fresh air after running scared for years. Patti let me tag along to her company’s holiday party in Park City. We were in the Stein Erikson Lodge at the Deer Valley Resort. The Gin Blossoms were the band. Being around Patti there made me realize that there were bigger possibilities waiting for me somewhere on the planet, that the life I wanted probably wasn’t going to happen in Moscow, Idaho. I wanted more for myself, and to find a man who’d like to travel and adventure with me. I wanted community and love and friends again.
When we left the party, on the snowy drive home, we created what we’d have in the New Year. For Patti it was abundance and her life is now richer and fuller than she’d imagined, I think.
For me, it was community. Let me tell you, this year was like magic that way.
Today Mom and I went shopping with Sara, my new friend I had Thanksgiving dinner with. I spend time up at her house with her daughters and husband, and feel welcome there even with her in-laws who don’t speak English. She and another colleague, Caroline, and I talk a lot about their new Cultural Studies major because our academic interests so overlap. Caroline commutes from Zurich and stays at my house a couple nights per week. It’s like having slumber parties again. Sometimes we laugh so hard I’m afraid the neighbors will complain. Sometimes it’s one a.m. and we’re still laughing.
They’re both good friends with the Frenchman and recommend him highly. We’re talking about starting a supper club and we’re reforming the College. We’re all so glad to have found one another, we even say so. The other night I was having a little dinner at my house and Frenchie (as Beth calls him) stopped in mid-meal and said, “I’ve been here six years and never had dinner like this with my colleagues.” He’s thrilled to have found us all, too.
And so I have a community. (I have another bunch of friends I go to hear jazz with every weekend, but that’s another post.) It’s so good, like coming home. How crazy is that? I moved to a country where they don’t speak my language and found friends who feel like home.
That’s just one little thing that’s happened this year. I also have abundance and love and contentment and maturity in ways I’d never guessed at. I know now, after these last few years, that I can do anything. I know a few things I still need to work on (I lost my cool with people I love a few times this year and wish I hadn’t). It’s been a good year.
And you know what I’m creating for next year…? LOVE Love everywhere. What would it be like if people on this college campus related to each other with the love this bunch of us is cultivating? I can’t wait to see…
Happy New Year to you!
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: ) !!!!!!!!!!!
-from the loves!!!!
(yes, love will come to you!!, and I am not just talking about jessica and myself!!)