A Turnaround Year

Christmas Week dawns clear, bright, cold but snow-less. It doesn't seem quite right.

It's about this time each year that I'm struck with a mindless, manic need to clean house - closets, drawers, forgottten niches that I haven't looked at all year, shelves, cabinets, shoe trees all become targets. I stock up on bleach, trash bags, Pledge and floor polish and attack room by room, brutally tossing out anything I find that serves no purpose, dusting what can't be moved and re-arranging the rest. This is no holds barred, full fledged war against junk and sentimentality. Blinds are ripped from their holders and tossed into a Lysol bath, bookcases emptied and restocked, jewelry matched, pictures windex'd to an inch of their lives, silverware sorted and inventoried. This year even 10 years worth of cd's will be alphabetized and categorized - there's no stopping the energy or dedication that springs from this internal need to organize, weed out, clean up, clear away and start again. It's an exhausting process but at the end the sense of satisfaction is enormous.

The roots of this battle go all the way back to my childhood. When it was time to clean my room, I simply piled everything in the middle of the floor and started in - it was the only way I wouldn't be tempted to cut corners or take half measures. I set no store by old yearbooks or keepsakes, have no interest in keeping pressed flowers or prom dresses. I like each year to be a clean slate with as little history as possible and an uncluttered future. All this purging has side effects, as if by showing no mercy to the physical, my emotional housekeeping seems to get done as well and I feel clearer, stronger, more grounded and in touch, adequately armed and ready to face a new year. The past year is put in its place, fenced in and forgiven.

Optimism and reality always seems to be at odds within me but as the new year approaches, I like to think it will be a turnaround year.

This is the year, I tell myself, that my friend Henry will find work - respectable, living wage work that he will come to like and do well. He will regain his confidence and humor and purpose. This is the year that my friend Liv's baby will come into the world and her life will be forever changed, I hope for the better. This is the year that my friend Trisha will become pain free, my friend Sammy will find sobriety, my cousin Linda will be published and my musician friends will prosper. This is the year my photography will pay off.

Well, perhaps. But if not, other things may turn around - and even if they don't, we keep on keepin' on.

It may be the idea rather than the reality of a fresh start that inspires us to do better, to be better. At the very least, I will begin with uncluttered closets and organized silverware.