A new year dawns, but take care, it's slippery out there.
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- January 4, 2020
- 932
The start of a new year means different things to different people.
For some it’s a chance to make a good life even better.
For others it’s a reminder that no matter how bad things might seem, there’s a chance it won’t get worse.
For me it’s a blank sheet of paper with words yet to be written.
And that means I have some small measure of control, given the fact that if I can write well, my life might touch others.
I was sitting on the patio just the other day, just basking in the abnormal warmth of a late-December afternoon, thinking to myself, “I don’t like 73 degrees in winter. What’s wrong with me?”
Because it’s insane.
No matter how jaded an exiled Ohioan might be and regardless of the distance from home, it’s crazy not to bask in the alien abundance of being able to walk around the back yard in a ratty Black Crowes T-shirt, vintage Notre Dame shorts and well-worn flip-flops and not feel blessed.
I’m so much like Charlie Brown it’s scary.
“Of all the Charlie Browns in the world,” says Linus, quoting his menacing sister Lucy, “you’re the Charlie Browniest.”
And that’s the problem, isn’t it?
Some people are simply unable to accept the fact that somehow, someway, maybe this’ll be the year everything works out fine.
I am not, however, a believer in that kind of thinking.
I step warily into each new year that I am granted, fully expecting trip wires, land mines and IEDs, believing one false step could blow the whole thing up before the big falling ball in Times Square has been packed away for another 12 months.
And now that I’m on the threshold of my next birthday — which is one of those milestones I’d never imagined achieving — I’m even more reluctant to welcome good news.
Turning 65 means I’m old.
Period.
That’s how the federal government sees me, anyway. I’m officially able to retire, and even though that’s the last thing on my mind, it’s hard to ignore the truculent pull of that siren’s call to a life of leisure that haunts my every thought even as sleep eludes me.
I don’t want to be idle.
I don’t want to go fishing.
I don’t want to write a will.
What I want is to be able to go where I want, when I want and not have to explain myself to anybody else. In this I remain unmoved.
It has always been my belief to leave the back door unlocked so that if and when it becomes necessary I have to make a quick exit, nothing can slow me down.
It’s why I’ve never signed a mortgage or had children, why I’ve avoided staying at any one job too long, why the road is always open and all I have to do is wish it and I will be able to roam.
I think I have one more move left in me, though where that might take me or when, I have no idea. Moving is hard, whether it’s across town or across the country, and gone are the days when I could simply pick up the phone and, an hour or so later, a dozen true and loyal friends would show up ready to pack and roll.
Once in early January — this was one of those icy witches, frigid and unforgiving, an Ohio reminder that winter was no joke — I remember calling for the cavalry and how gratified I was to see those pickup trucks and station wagons careen down the street, sliding to a slushy stop in front of the place I’d be moving into after having been not so subtly asked to vacate my previous digs.
The boys were up for the challenge, and even though there was some good-natured griping — nothing is heavier to move, after all, than hundreds of books and thousands of records — when lift came to shove, my friends were always there for me.
And I for them.
That’s the way it worked back home.
Picture this: An inflexible box spring that won’t fit up a staircase, a beckoning open second-floor bedroom window, an ice-slicked 45-degree pitched roof and a bunch of guys standing on the street, staring up as the early-January night closes in, cold and inevitable.
“If I could get up there, you know, climb out the bedroom window,” said the red-headed catcher on our Church League softball team, “and you guys could push it up and over that gutter, I think I could hold on until someone could pull it inside.”
The fact he could easily have slipped off that incline and plunged 40 feet to certain injury, if not death, never occurred to us.
That, as I’ve said, is the way things were back home.
You didn’t ask why.
You said, “Why not?”
That was half a lifetime ago, and I’ve learned a great deal since then. For one thing you can’t count on friends you’ve never made, and for another, the older you get, the less likely that is to happen.
And that’s on me.
As much as I’d like to blame the South in general and North Carolina in particular, it’s my fault I haven’t made so much as one good, reliable friend since I moved here 20 years ago.
Will 2020 be any different?
That remains to be seen, but I don’t think it’s very likely. My wife and I have become sedentary creatures, comfortable with each other’s company and not requiring much else. If you counted up the number of holiday visitors we’ve had to our rental house over the last two decades, you wouldn’t even need your toes.
But life has a wondrous way of surprising us, doesn’t it? I mean who’s to say that in the new year some of us couldn't hit the lottery or inherit a beach house or hear a former unfaithful lover had hit rock bottom, was destitute and lonely and without any friends?
The mind boggles at the good things that could be waiting.
But I’d advise against optimism at this early stage of the new year.
January is a ruthless month, and the best you can do is ride it out.