My favorite time of year is the week between Christmas and New Year when “Auld Lang Syne” backdrops almost every advertisement or every mall at closing or every gathering. Sorry, the song says to me, that we can’t go back. But we were there. The love is undying. It was written 235 years ago — popularized by drunken assemblies and war — and I always think about how strange it is that we use a message so timeworn and crestfallen to welcome something new. And then I remember that amidst its strangeness, it’s perfectly constitutive of things beyond the holiday.
As January makes way for December’s cinematic exit, I see everyone suddenly as a beginner about to take on a new year in infancy. Hugs last a little longer. Winter feels a little less cold. I’m awestruck by the town I grew up in as if I didn’t spend 11 full years of my life there. It’s like I notice, for the first time, the yellow glow of the lights strung above the downtown, the vastness of my favorite place to hike or the blueness of my parents’ kitchen. Seeing friends I used to spend every day with feels special, like a birthday or a lunar eclipse. That week — every year without fail — makes everything feel bigger.
There came a year when this feeling wasn’t alive and breathing for only a week. I realized maybe it had always been this way.
The first song that ever made me cry was “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by John Denver. I was upstairs getting ready for bed with my mom. I think I was 2. I’m sure she wondered what was hurting me: pulled hair? Bumped knee? No — it was another sonic sentiment about an end.
In third grade, I had a hard time joining in with my friends who played four square and spilled otter pops on their shirts and ran around the basketball hoops to celebrate the last day of school. I was excited for summer but walked home with a heavy heart, knowing that I would never be in the same room as all those kids again (are you kidding? I was 9). I still see the world that way.
Sensitivity kept seeping into gaps in the day-to-day: I’d avoid loud noises or succumb to a sudden urge to seclude myself in nature. I started keeping a box of all my letters and cards. My mom would sometimes laugh when I’d play Patty Griffin or Emmylou Harris in the car. “Are you a hundred years old?” she’d joke. Sometimes I think I am: that slow, cherished week between Christmas and New Year is a time for me to recognize 20 years of lifetimes.
Everything elicits a tear from me now: a phone call with a distant friend. A moment of bravery. The first warm day in spring. “Of course”s in place of “you’re welcome”s. Especially images of the home — I’m fascinated by the feeling of belonging that usually floats between feelings, not neighborhoods. I think we spend our lives searching for it, gaining it and losing it. ‘Home is where the heart is’ is tattooed on my arm now.
Last week I was at a home for paintings and artifacts (the museum), and I lingered near a sign on a door that asserted NO ADULT TO BE ADMITTED WITHOUT THE ACCOMPANIMENT OF A CHILD. I was struck by its starkness. A curator gently permissed, “You can go inside,” and, as I often do, I wondered what I could make of this in-between feeling. How could I write about this so that everyone else could hold it, too?
I used to think I was born with a weird, alienating discernment. This is something I often attribute to my Scorpio stellium, but as I approach 21, I think this experience is not unique to me. Older people remind me of what it’s like to be a kid and friends who are younger than me impart the sagacity of a much-older sibling. I think we’re all trying to make sense of this complicated world by returning to things we loved and searching for things we might.