New Years and Feathers

This year's New Years arrived, at least for me, 1 hour before 12:00.

It arrived in my Honda civic to a song by Sister hazel and to the clink of mason jars and laughter from the passenger side as Kimberly- also referred by me as Huckleberry or Diana- reiterated our New Year's story.

Driving back home alone, I was amazed that I was not 8, or 12, or 17, but in fact 23, and that instead of walking back home from that house on the top of that hill, I was driving my car. I was amazed that in one hour, time could both rewind and fast forward, and that I could indulge in my past almost as much as in my future. But, this is the gift of New Years.

They call is New Years, but sometimes, I wonder if in fact it should be called "Old Years." Because one night a year, my inner teenager and the ever courageous child-me appears and she wants big and small things. She wants to hope in all things, and believe all things, and she writes these "things" into her journal, and in the next year, attempts to achieve these things, great and small.

And what is amazing...is that she does. I do.

Some await New Years to make resolutions, to make promises with uncrossed fingers, and to write on notebook paper the list of "to dos" for the days to come, but what I have found myself doing most New Years is celebrating the "Old Years," the year past, the year survived, the year hoped.

I don't make resolutions, not really. Instead, I imagine the future year with all of the hope I can muster, and then set out to keep that hope alive until the day my happy bubble gets popped, and then I pick myself up, and do it again. And the next New Year's, I hope again, and secretly relish in all I've accomplished in the past and in the future.

Thus far, I have:
written tons of novels AND gotten them published, made the cheerleader squad, gone to Tuscany, Italy, written letters that were so masterfully created that they inspired the reader, ran a mile in under 10 minutes, gone to Africa and loved on those little babies, danced in a street, left behind enough anonymous messages in the back of library books that students have found them and laughed at my clever words, graduated from Auburn University, gotten a job as a writer, become a registered dietitian, had a pug, mastered spelling, read all of those books on my book list, come to term with who God is and who He is to me, learned how to long board, written amazing songs, learned how to play the guitar, violin, and read sheet music, had an extraordinary life, have had tons of real conversations with strangers who don't know me, been brave enough to...., gone on a road trip...

this list goes on my friends.

What is real? and what isn't? What has been hoped or imagined and what has actually been achieved? That is for me to know and for you to wonder.

I read once on a hobby lobby frame that, "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul."

Hope has feathers for a reason, and feathers allow flight for a reason. I'm not a bird, I don't have wings, but somewhere in my soul, I have a feather, maybe I have a whole downy pillow's worth of feathers. It was in the past that they first appeared, but it's seeing them in the future that keeps them with me.

I walk around sometimes and find myself amused by all of the feathers that fall off of my shoes and backpack. I find them in my notebooks, in-between the shelves at the library, and sometimes, in my hair.

I'm sure there are people who get annoyed when they appear on their shoulders or desk, or who are allergic to them and wish I'd put them away, but I can't help it..the feathers are just there to stay. So I keep on walking, feathers in a trail behind me. I hope that some people will pick them up very well knowing that others will do their best to avoid them by tip-toeing their way around my downy path.

So what is the point here?

Every New Year's I remember the old years, and the old hopes, and I stuff enough feathers into my pockets, and notebooks, and shoes so that everywhere I go, I'll see them on a sidewalk, or in my desk, or on the shoulder of another, so that I can be reminded why stumble around, stubbing my toes on "reality" when I can fly?