Month twelve of year twenty-fourteen. I am sad to see the year near a close, but it's a different sort of close than that of a good book. There's an emptiness and almost a loneliness that I feel when I finish a good novel—I grow attached to the characters and become familiar with their world. When the remaining pages are few, I begin to read more and more slowly, putting off the ending as long as possible. At the close of a book, I'm not ready to say goodbye to it all; I wish for more.
I feel very differently about the close of a year. Yes, I have been breathlessly caught up in the adventure of it all, entwined with the characters and have become familiar with the rhythm, rises and routines. The cliffhangers of a year have me at the edge of my chair, but at the close of a year, I don't fear the dust that it will soon gather as the thirty-first page of the twelfth chapter conclude.
I simply wake up the next day. I kiss the neck of the man sleeping beside me, pull on a sweater and tiptoe across the chilly kitchen floor to put a kettle on for coffee.
This past year brought pleasure and pain, highlights and shadows, crags and chasms. Each have enriched the story in a unique way—after all, what is a story without contrast? 'Tis monotony. A succession of bland interactions; a drone, unvaried in pitch and tone. With heights and depths there are opportunities to respond and feel, to trust and hope, to wait and see.
Ah yes, I will wait and see, because the conductor has not laid his baton to rest. Whether major or minor the chord, the resolve does not occur without the final wave of his hand, and it has not yet waved. I have peeked ahead to see the final movement of the piece, and am reassured to know that the end is more epic than the interlude.
