As the past threads to the present, the eye of the needle either grows larger to allow in new hope or smaller to keep out the misdeeds of times past. While “Goodbye, good riddance, old year” is a comfortable knee-jerk reaction to a tough year, I caution myself not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the saying reminds.
Even when the baby is throwing a temper tantrum, there remains the possibility of enlightenment.
I have kept journals for most of my life. Some were in formal diaries, like the locked ones I had when I was a teenager, with covers sporting replicas of faces smiling, a surreptitious warning not to write on its pages if one was unhappy. These provoked guilt about most of the things a teenage girl might want to write about.
Maybe that was the reason for the thin faux leather strap that snapped into a lock when the diary was closed and needed a key to reopen. A snip of the scissors would also have gained entry into the secrets within, but I convinced myself that no one would dare enter without permission. And just in case, the key was hidden in a small jewelry case in my dresser drawer.
In later years, I kept my thoughts in spiral notebooks allowing me to rip out a written page and pretend that part of my life never existed. However, most of the time I would fold the discarded pages and tuck them into the pockets of the notebook. It was as though someone whispered, “Just because it is sad doesn’t make it bad.”
Eventually, I graduated to lined yellow pads and finally a reporter’s notebook with occasional notes on napkins in between. I kept more of my written thoughts as I developed an awareness of their possible value to me. While some of them became seeds of stories I wrote and published, many in this column, I discovered a more significant reason for respecting my thoughts in the time frame in which I recorded them.
They are a reminder of what is possible. Reading my own words about disappointment when a story was rejected made it all the sweeter when one was accepted. From disenchantment to surviving illness and loss, the journals became my blueprint from “I can’t do this” to “Maybe I can” to “I did it.” I’m still stuck on many “Maybe I cans,” but I have developed a strong reverence for possibility.
So as I thread my needle for the new year, I need the eye to be large enough to accommodate my journals of mishaps and made betters, my reminders that hope still hangs in the air.
Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on X @patriciabunin and Patriciabunin.com
