So...where did that year go?

Are all the years blurring into one? I need to start to keep a diary because as I reflected on the past year I realised some of the things I was fondly reminiscing about as "highlights" actually happened...a-hem...the year before. But then, calendars are such an arbitrary container of lives that I suppose it doesn't matter what my mind considers a highlight from any other time. It's all a merge really, isn't it? A merge of goodtimes-badtimes-hardtimes - of juggling the variables of a complex family life; tackling one thing after another no matter what the date.

I told myself - and anyone else who would listen - that I wanted 2014 to be without crises - to be without a significant disaster. You see, it does seem as though the last three years running have contained a serious event or loss...is that just life? We have had huge grief and loss - my mum in 2011 and my father in law in 2012. And the year just passed almost broke me in two with one of my children struggling with mental health issues - which hardly seems adequate to describe the stress and pain and heartbreak and all the beating ourselves up over what we should have done that the phrase encompasses. So my final words on New Years Eve 2013 were:  I want no more disasters. No more crises. No more middle of the night phone calls or hospital emergencies.

As the sun rose on 2014 there it was - the emergency phone call. The crisis. The hospital. That will teach me to open my big mouth. (All is fine now. Sigh.) 
I had to stop myself from tainting the whole unfurling year of 2014 with a wash of bad blood. I had to stop myself from seeing this as a significant augur of bad times to come for the whole year. Because really - it's a date, isn't it? It's completely man made constraint placed onto the turning of the planet and the ebb and flow of the tides. And in a complicated life there will be pain and stress and heartbreak and self examination and conscience-sifting and regrets and guilt - along with all the love and attachments and achievements and plans.

So. Another year! Another month, another week....it's really just another day. So good day to you all!