My six year old son asked Santa for two fish this year. Santa brought the fish, and on Christmas morning they swam around for two whole hours before they up and died. Quite a trek from the North Pole, I told my son and we both agreed Santa should have known better. Today my husband took my son to Petco where they picked out seven new ones. At home, we stared at them swimming around and we had a good feeling that these guys would make it.

Watching the fish calmed me down.
I needed calming.

The new puppy had just shat in the foyer and in the playroom. My husband was at the airport picking up his brother and family. My in-laws were at the liquor store, stocking up. I was alone, nursing an ingrown nail and suddenly livid. What good is a pet if you won’t help me take care of it??!! My voice was loud and strangled, my face red. The kids started crying and told me I was scaring them. It was a terrible feeling, to be frightened by ones own mother. I got quiet again. We went back to watching the fish. I hugged my sons and apologized for my outburst. It’s ok, said my oldest. But it wasn’t.

I haven’t been calm in a long time.

I haven’t written in a long time either. A lifetime, it seems. The world is making me scurry into corners, hide under blankets, think the worst. I have no energy to write or commute or bring the laundry down into the basement. I am a sloth, and fearful on top of it. I am wrung dry, and yet still awash with dreadful scenarios. I’d make a list but do I need to? A few operative words will suffice. Paris. Guns. Isis. Trump. Tamir. Refugees. Terrorists. Bombings.

I have a backache and infected thumb, bumps and bruises on my thighs and upper arms. Mostly this is from the play I was in, where nightly I fell on rocks, and on my knees, screamed my head off, pretended to cum. My body is feeling the aftermath of one of the best performances I’ve ever given. But now, a coma, and dreariness. In general, this balmy December, I am feeling crippled by something.

Maybe if it would snow. Maybe if we could all just fucking get along, despite our meaningful and meaningless differences. Maybe if we grew a pair. Maybe if we stopped pointing our fingers, all that indignity and mockery. Maybe, baby.

Tomorrow we say goodbye to a year that was too much. I’m glad to say goodbye to it, I can’t wait for midnight to arrive. I vow to drink the drink I usually carry around, weaving through the revelers in my house, wondering how they got there, promising that next year it will be small and intimate gathering. I’m not making any resolutions either, except for one:
don’t yell at bedtime.

I am anxious. The anxiety is heavy, constant, irrefutable. Part of me truly hates the world as it is now - fractured, tumultuous, without a soul, cold and hard and hollow. I miss video rental stores and tokens and dialing numbers. I miss having to wait for news.

Maybe this is why I haven’t been writing. I want to feel light on my feet. I want to be like my son’s fish, content with what they have and happily oblivious to the fact that they can go, any minute.

A few weeks ago I rode into the city, to the theatre, and my chest tightened for the 1.5 miles it took to get through the Lincoln tunnel. My Uber driver was an African American man in his late sixties, originally from Georgia, living in New Jersey for two decades, his Southern lilt still in tact, and when he spoke, his voice settled me down. We talked about the good old days, about young people now and how angry they all were and how entitled. He asked me what I thought about Trump. He told me stories of how blacks and whites used to live together, in his old neighborhood, how respect was something taught and nurtured and earned. He told me it was the fault of drugs, how everything went to shit starting in the eighties. Drugs and the internet, he said, his brow furrowing. It was an interesting talk, and pleasant somehow, and I bid him goodbye reluctantly and told him to get back home safely. I wished we could have driven around together in circles, slow-crawling loops between two states. And I thought about him for days.

At dinner tonight, I had a fig martini even though I’d just taken antibiotics. I wanted the anxiety to melt away. It didn’t quite work. Later, my son told his fish goodnight, reading their names off a piece of paper where he’d painstakingly written them down. Goodnight Bobby Junior. Goodnight, Bobby Senior. Goodnight, Bob. Et cetera. He clicked off the aquarium lights, and as we lay in bed we could hear the trickle of the filter, like a tiny waterfall.
“Tell me something great about the world,” I whispered.
“They made fish.”
I didn’t ask him if the ‘they’ meant humans or gods. I just nodded my head and gave into the calm that was him in my arms, fast asleep, breathing peacefully.

This one will be quick because time is running out the guests will soon arrive and I still need to plate the cheese and pour the salsa and change out of my black sweat shirt into my black blouse
And maybe even put on some heels
Anything to feel festive instead of bittersweet

It’s all shadows and flickering candle lights and children on ipads which reminds me that 2015 will be the year of minimal electronics and maximum conversation, the face to face kind, the kind with no distractions because I want my children to be able to read faces not interfaces I want them to be quick on their feet and nimble with their hands, like cutting shapes out of construction paper, 2015 the year of arts and crafts and talking like really really talking to one another

No resolutions this time
I know myself well enough that no amount of wishful thinking or annotated lists will change what must be changed and what simply cannot

I am happy about many things in my life
And wistful about the same old shit
I am sad about the general state of the world as I feel we are getting further and further from empathy and kindness but no not tonight tonight I will smile and imbibe and wait for my husband to grab the karaoke mic and sing me a song like when we were dating
I will try to look at him as if we just met as if I just spotted him across a crowded room and I know my cheeks will flush and I will be bold and I’ll go up to him and tell him
hey I think I’m gonna fall for you real fast

It’s all yellow lights, table set, clocks ticking, a lone streamer, chips and dips, the Christmas trees crackling, crumbling with the slightest touch, but I’m holding on to one more eve where the only requirement is merriment and love

Love one another, hard and fast and steady
Show your love
Find your happiness

Happy New Year
I have to go
The first guests have arrived
and the dogs are barking
It’s gonna be a good one
It has to be
Because what else do we have
But faith that life can still astound us