It’s the last day of the year. It’s raining. John and I are both sick and won’t be driving to Oyster Bay to share a feast with our friends, one that will extend into the small hours so that the New Year will be be properly greeted with sparklers and champagne. Instead, we’ll be long asleep by midnight. People are making lists of what they’ve read over the past year, or what they’ve published, or, or, or. I don’t separate things. Reading, writing, sewing, cooking, gardening, time with my family and friends, swimming my slow kilometer and a third, listening to Bach or Emmylou Harris, taking the Canada Line out to the airport on the first leg of a journey, waiting for the first salmonberry blossoms, feeding the Steller’s jay in the morning, correcting proofs, taking a bottle of Prosecco to the beach for happy hour with my daughter on a trip to the Pacific Rim, trying to scrub the stains out of tablecloths, picking tomatoes: it all seems part of a scrappy patchwork that is my life. I’m grateful for all of it, even the uneven stitches, the courses of squares that won’t align properly, the stars that often need to be picked out and begun again (measure twice, cut once), and when I look back, squinting a little to focus on the smallest scrap, I’m pretty happy with the year, though it had its share of challenges, losses, frustrations, and sadness.
...Theresa Kishkan 
Excellent blue! Blessings for the new year!
>
And to you too!
Beautiful indeed, Theresa – your family and, as always, your words. I look forward to finding that copy of Brick. Happy 2020 to you and yours, and brava for all you’ve achieved.
Thank you, Beth. The years pass, they accumulate, don’t they? Best of everything to you and your family too.