Wrap 2009

I was at the shop 'til well after 7pm tonight. Mrs. KintlaLake was done working six hours earlier, and as soon as she got home she put a bottle of champagne on ice.

I love that woman.

A year ago today I wrote about standing on a ridge, forging ahead and not turning back. I'm fresh out of metaphors at the moment -- reality will have to do.

When my wife and I raise our glasses at the stroke of midnight, there will be a sense of "good riddance." I mean, this was a year full of trials and tumult for us, and she'll be kissing off a decade that began in another marriage, long before she and I met, an abusive environment that she and her boys fled five years ago.

Good riddance, indeed.

But tonight we won't be toasting the past's departure -- at our ages, both of us closer to the end than to the beginning, we know better than to celebrate days that won't come again. No, we'll clink and sip and savor in anticipation of new beginnings, this and every dawn, moments too few to squander.

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake," Thoreau wrote at the close of Walden. "There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

We stand in welcome before that star.