I Hereby Resolve. . .

The year 2023 has melted into the pancake, Time. I'm full and have pushed back my chair. As a rule, I avoid making resolutions, but I know exactly what my intention will be this year. Somewhere in the last month, I got a notification of how much time I'd spent on my screen and resolved to spend less. Ugh. I'm a stack with too much syrup, saturated with Google, word games, podcasts, email, eBay, and online shopping. In search of relief, I'm regressing to my childhood archives to focus on precious relic events from my pre-internet past. 

Autograph books are at the top of my list of timeless things. I still have mine. It's a blue leatherette and sports an embossed Scotty dog. After coveting my older sister's, I got my own in third grade. A lover of people and words, watching that book of blank pages travel around the lunch room was a joy. Over sixty years later, I smile at the signatures, inscriptions, poems, and memory gems my friends and family wrote in the early 50s.

In addition to Mass and Confession on weekends, my mom religiously trotted my sisters and me off to the library. Everyone has experiences that define ways that lead on to other ways. For me, it was tracking the color-coded stars that decorated the top of my library card as a member of The Good Readers Club. Fated for life as a younger sister, I could never compete with all the gold stars that beckoned to me as they danced across my older sister's card. Inextinguishable remains the fire that burns for devouring book after book. 

At an early age, I learned how to fold a flag properly and to make a bed with hospital corners. Flowy and curvilinear by nature, I wonder if I would have made it as long as I have without these exacting skills. And, speaking of curvilinear, I can't say enough good about cursive writing. My given name, Virginia, boasts four syllables, and it took me a long time to travel that up-and-down landscape over and over. A bit of a space cadet, I shudder to think of what I'd be like without all the grounding practice of the good old Palmer Method.

The personal hand-to-hand, eye-to-eye delivery of report cards was a regular custom at the parochial grammar school that I attended for my first eight years of school. Monsignor McCarthy would sit at the front of the classroom and call each of us up by name. This standard pedagogical practice packed an unavoidable, walloping benefit of reality to me and my fellow students - obviously for both good and ill. We mattered; life was real. 

         

Always a nature girl, I loved a solitary tromp into the deep New Hampshire woods. The jungle hammock my father bought me when I was 12 allowed me the pinnacle experience of sleeping outside supported by beloved pines. Me: all by myself in the dark. Zipped up in mosquito netting and tucked into the oily-smelling sleeping bag left over from Dad's stint in the war, I felt safe. As I lay there, I took in the fact of my bravery while I listened to the crunch, snap, and skitter sounds that stood in for bedtime stories. 

Pen pals. The world was so small back then. Was it more innocent? Always friendly, the invitation waved to me from the back pages of my Lulu comic books. I knew the power of the written word and longed for a letter-writing friend. 

 Vying for first place with Autograph Books is the hand pump that sat by the side of our soapstone sink when we first moved into our summer cottage. My father knew how to do everything, and I remember him demonstrating the need for the prime water he poured into the pump to pull up the cool, clear supply from our well. My memories here have served as an antidote that has opened my eyes. I see the areas of my life that get crowded out with all that screen time. I want to respect kaleidoscopic Time with all its many gifts: Time, the open book, the teacher, the denizen of detail, the encourager, the emboldener, and Time, the faithful friend. 

As a writer, I consider the creative process, how words beget words, beget words. So, last but not least, here's to the satisfaction of opening a fountain pen and filling it up with fresh, new ink. People, nature, books, the written word, and exacting skills - these memories refreshed and renewed and allowed me to welcome 2024 into Time, the blank paper onto which I'll let the new year flow.

I'm primed - ready and resolved. The analog life is rounder, deeper, and full - impossible to achieve while trapped for so long on a screen. 

Blank Pages Made to Be Filled