Do Over Fresh Start

The first week of 2021 didn't go quite as we hoped or expected.

Thanksgiving cranberry sauce in a new January role.

To state the obvious, 2020 was not a good year.  2021 is supposed to be our fresh new hope.  People pointed out, and of course in our rational moments we already knew, that just because the calendar page flips and the last digit of the year changes doesn't mean all the bad stuff from last year goes away.  And so it was borne out in the first full week by the unthinkable treachery.

In the marking of the passage of time, the end of one year and beginning of another is really only an arbitrary selection of a specific moment that happens to be widely recognized so as to have become a matter of convention.  So what mystical significance or power could possibly be imbued in that second after midnight January 1st?  None.

Now, that could be a disappointing or devastating realization for some people - that nothing has changed, that the dark clouds from the prior period still loom over 2021.  But not for me, because there was always a chance at a new fresh start soon afterward - Lunar New Year, which, in my Vietnamese upbringing, meant the one based on the Chinese calendar (due to the long history of Chinese influence on the Vietnamese), and that one traditionally follows on the heels of the Julian new year, generally lagging by a couple of weeks, though in some years by more than a month.  So if something goes awry in the early part of the Julian year, it's easy enough to switch mindset and chalk it up to the fact that it is still the end of the lunar year.  It's all just a matter of perspective - and for that, having access to different cultural traditions is mighty handy. 

Didn't manage to get out December holiday cards?  There's still time before the Lunar New Year.  Resolutions already caput?  There's still a chance to rededicate yourself to them when Lunar New Year rolls around. So the early part of January, that tail end of the year in the lunar calendar, it remains that period when all the kinks can be worked out, the bad juju from the prior year can all be chalked up to that.  It's the buffer zone, the rehearsal period, so to speak.

The leftover odds and ends lingering from last year can still sort themselves out, and maybe transform themselves into something more positive... The Trump-incited siege of the Capitol can turn into a wake-up call for renewed protection of the democratic process, perhaps a soul searching within the Republican Party that will lead to a cleaving from the extremist, racist, bigoted, deluded wingnuts within its ranks; we did all know that Inauguration Day isn't until January 20th anyway... The cranberry sauce from a pre-Thanksgiving Zoom call dinner with colleagues can transform from an accompaniment to a grilled turkey burger to become a sweet counterpoint to brie encoated in chia seeds on grain crackers with walnuts - a marginally acceptably healthy lunch or snack... The trunk of the long-dead tricolor peach tree, stripped of its branches seasons upon seasons ago, can join with spent Christmas trees and be transformed during Mulchfest into mulch for the street trees.

Lone surviving tree pit planting of mine on 81st street - a little post-Mulchfest mulching. 

There remains the possibility of transformation, hope, renewal, a fresh start yet.

[Edited January 12, 2021.]