What I want to bring into the new year with me and what I want to leave behind:
In: The HBO series 'Getting On.'
No-one seems to have heard of it, yet it's one of the best shows on TV right now. It's a comedy and a drama, often at the same time, and I've never seen anything like it. I've wept watching this show, both from laughing so hard and from, well, crying.
Out: I pray to be less neurotic about Ginger.
Oh my god her toe is red. Oh my god she's making a hacking sound. Is she peeing more than usual? She's shaking her head funny - does she have a head cold? Is that a limp; does she look sad right now; she has gas - did she eat something off the street? Losing Opal has made me desperate to not lose this one. Ginger is a happy dog, a well cared for dog, a healthy dog. Chances are she'll be waking us up at 5:30 every morning for many years to come.
In: Trust my gut more.
I have an uncanny gut. I'll know things. I'll see things that may not be there, but are there. It's time to accept it and trust it more than I currently do. I'm quick to know I can be way off or totally wrong. Usually though, my crazy thoughts bear some truth. Go with them.
In: I'm very grateful that my home life of Joe, Ginger, what I do for a living and how we live, is solid. My friends, too, are very meaningful to me. This year I became more aware of how lucky I am.
Out: Fury and hurt and grief over my sister.
I have an older sister. She's my last immediate family member still alive. For context, my grandparents, uncles and almost everyone else except a few cousins and favorite auntie are also dead. (I feel too young to have no family, but it's how it went.)
The last time I saw my sister was four years ago, at our mother's funeral. It was also the last time we spoke. We never had a time where we were close, but in the three years taking care of our mother I harbored hope that we'd get through our differences. My sister still lived in the area we were born in, and from frequently going back to see my mother I got to know my sister very well. We are extremely different, opposites even, and not in the cute way that opposites can compliment each other. I tried to get closer to her, but she didn't want a friendship. I kept thinking she's my sister, so no matter what keep hoping we'll work it out.
Then, I started to change shortly before my mother passed. It was so hard for me to even think that I may not like her, or that it was okay that we weren't going to have a relationship. It was also hard to feel the hurt that she wanted nothing with me. She was my big sister, yet I always saw her as fragile and felt maternal toward her, protective. Yet at the end my mother took all my focus and my sister simply became a person in my life. I didn't feel good or bad about her; she registered, but no longer in a fraught or emotional way. Driving back to New York from the funeral with my friends, I felt okay that I wouldn't see her again. I even felt relief.
Five months later, the fury started. It'd come from nowhere, being so fuck*ng angry at her. It'd dissipate, come back, vanish for months at a time, suddenly show it's head then vanish again. This time when the anger came up it briefly shifted to hurt, which shifted to sadness. It bounced around there for a few months, then last week it hit me that it is what it is and it's time to find acceptance with it. Seeing this has let the rage go and with it, I will say sadly, thinking about her. Something has shifted and it feels like I'm moving on.
In: I want to go to the movies more instead of streaming everything on the box. Going to the movies alone in the middle of the day is a decadent joy. There's a great theater near me that is clean and has stadium seating and the crowds tend to be light and respectful of whatever is showing. Seeing a movie on a huge screen is incomparable. I want to put my shoes on and go go go.
Everything else in my life, i.e. art and writing and teaching and consulting and my writing group and greenmarkets and this blog and you dear readers and Netflix and Joe's family and all the stuff that makes my world spin is coming with me. And the meatballs Joe's about to make. This was a good eating year and starting a new one with meatballs sets it up well.
The happiest New Year to all. May you bring good things into the new year with you. 
Comments
In: Watch 'Getting On'
Out: I will also pray that you be less neurotic about Ginger.
In: Follow your instincts. More often than not, they show the right direction, whether we agree or not.
Out: Fury and hurt and grief over my brother, whom I haven't seen for 19 years now. Both of us were drafted a few months apart, and both went to V N. Two people can go thru similar experiences, and develop totally different attitudes and viewpoints, and neither can understand the others point of view, not unlike your relationship with your sister. He came back semi-psychotic with an enormous chip (read: boulder) on his shoulder. He did have a rough, rough time. He was with the Americal Division, 199th Infantry Brigade, and they had no tank or artillery support. Ground pounders. Also known as cannon fodder. Of the 87 men he went over there with, only 13 came back alive or in one piece. He was wounded twice, but the worst wound was in his head. He eventually became 100% disabled, based on his ongoing psychosis, and still lives across from the V A Hospital in Miami. He became an alcoholic and a drug addict. He lived with me, my wife, and my 5 young children in my home in Davie Fl in 1995, and had a bedroom on the ground floor next to my office. One night I came home, and smelled something strange, which turned out to be crack cocaine, and my brother was in his room, high as a kite. As I tried to open the door, he assembled a chain of beer caps and beer cans, similar to what we used to do in V N with K Ratio tops and hand grenade pins, as a warning device, like a trip wire that alerts everyone that someone is crossing the perimeter. As I opened the door, he was sitting in the middle of his bed in a yoga position, and didn't have a clue where he was or who I was. He reached beneath his pillow and pulled out a machete, and told me that if I came one step closer, he would kill me. This with 5 young children in the house. The next day I made him leave the house, and he hasn't talked to me since. Different point of view, right??
In: Movies, movies, and more movies. I go to the movies at least once, and usually twice a week. In fact, just came from the movies. Saw Force Majeure, a intricate Swedish movie about an
entangled marriage relationship wherein the husband abandons the wife and children in a precarious moment, and they both have a difficult time forgiving him, if they do at all. Definitely go to more movies. You can't go wrong. I mostly go to Art Houses and watch Independent and/or foreign films, but I also recently saw Imitation Game about Alan Turing. Nothing short of phenomenal.
My best to you and Joe in the coming year Pamela. It is a real joy for me to read your blog. Thank you for allowing me to do so, and for enduring my long-windedness.
You too, Barb. And I just understood your comment about the hub going in at the World Trade Center. You're totally right!
Happy New Year Pam, to you, Joe, and Ginger
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