Playing Janus: 2019 and 2020

          At the beginning of the New Year I like to play Janus, the two-faced Roman god of gateways and transitions, whose one face looks back at the year past and the other ahead at the year to come.

          So, looking back at 2019: The biggest and best thing to happen was that I got married. Huge celebration.

Wonderful ceremony on the Applegate River with friends and family coming from all over the country. The wedding with its accompanying events was certainly the high point of 2019, but there were other peaks, too: taking a three-day hut-to-hut cross-country ski trip in the Central Cascades,

hiking 75 miles (with Mike) for my 75x75 project, finishing that project (to do 75 things of 75 repetitions each during my 75th year of life), and then celebrating that accomplishment with a wonderful 75th birthday party at my house with many friends. Other peaks were Mike's and my trip back East to introduce our respective families to each other, a trip to Hawaii for Mike's family reunion,

and other, more usual, family visits.

          But 2019 was a roller coaster year. Until only just before the wedding, Mike was in chemo for esophageal cancer. The good news came halfway through January: that the chemo was working. Chemo has a lot of down sides, but nothing mattered nearly so much when we knew the tumors were shrinking.
         Death struck in other places, though. My good friend Chris Bratt died, at home, basically because his good, big heart was worn out. He died singing. My dear friend Barbee Heilman died, of cancer, in her home in Tennessee, after an intense illness, during which she showed us all how to die well. And my friend, former student, and knitting teacher, Vera Hulme, died after a short illness and a long life. In addition, Mike had two close friends die during the year, one by suicide, the other by cancer. That was a lot of death to face in one year.

          And then 2019 came to an end with a New Year's Eve that lasted till 4:00 in the morning. I'm kind of proud of still being able to do something so off routine, although the debauchery, I have to admit, was pretty tame. Mike and I were just simply so involved in a diabolically difficult jigsaw puzzle that we didn't think of going to bed until we were so bleary-eyed we couldn't see the pieces any more. It took us about an hour to finish the puzzle the next day.

New York City skyline, in anticipation of a trip to NYC in 2020

          That's what Janus showed me with his looking-back face, all those highs interspersed with sorrows. When I turn with Janus's other face towards 2020, I hear Mike making a resolution to stay healthy: no more chemo, no more broken bones or falls off cliffs. I wholeheartedly support that resolution. Mine (besides the usual lose weight and do more yoga) is to not lose things, like all the earrings and hats I lost last year and the mail or tools or cell phone I spend too much time looking for around the house. This year will be different. Firmly resolved.
          But, alas, not so firmly adhered to. On New Year's Eve I left my hat at the chic-rustic bar in Medford where Mike and I went after the Rogue Valley Symphony concert, and yesterday I lost an earring on a walk. Mike retrieved the hat for me, and I'll take the same walk today that I took yesterday and see if I can find the earring, but how am I going to keep to my resolution with such a poor start?

          All in all, though, it's what I take away from looking back that is most important to apply to looking forward. The many joys and occasional sorrows of 2019 all have the same lesson: "Lif is læne," as the Anglo-Saxons used to say—life is fleeting. Never procrastinate love.