As I attempt a review of 2022, it becomes clear that it’s not the exercise it once was. I used to enjoy the packing up of twelve months, the accounting of a neat chapter. The years don’t stand on their own legs anymore, though. 2022 is ’21 is ’20. 2023 will likely be a continuation of the same honking catastrophe. It’s three years, nearly. All mashed together.
Years are a state of mind, at this point, with no discernable end or beginning. We are in late stages - pandemic, democracy, capitalism, planet. We are quite possibly in the nebulous last stage of everything and it’s a mess.
This year has come to mean these pandemic years. I honestly can’t remember when anything happened. Time is lost, muddled, tangled up in its own threads. Did we eat blue crabs on the porch this year or last? Did we meet the Californians two summers ago? When did we lose Aunt E, and when did Glory die? Which Christmas was the failed babka? The French onion soup? Which was the sick Christmas? When was the lost book deal, the distance graduation, the eye crisis, the first breakup? When did I fall in love with dal, or start eating candy like a child? When did who have Covid, when were which vaccines? How long ago did I make that triumphant braided lemon bread, or the fabulous apple cake? When did we buy the ramen bowls, the lawn chairs, the guitar? Smoked fish at sunset on the lake - this year? Last? Both? Lost love, found love. Who remembers anything.
In my mind, it was all this year. Photographic evidence proves otherwise, though. So much has happened in these pandemic years, but it’s all one buzzy, anxious season. Up, down, round again. (And why is my life remembered in food?)
Memory is a liar when time is undone.
My year in books is impossible to recount, because my brain can’t find the year. I discovered Tana French and David Rakoff, Sarah Moss, Abigail Thomas, and Deborah Levy. I loved Wayward and Pachinko, and finally got around to The Secret History, The Fire Next Time, and The Hours, which were each magnificent. I hated two books that everyone else loved (I will not name them). It all seems like this year, but couldn’t be. I don’t read that fast.
Three years.
We’ve been yanked around like kites in a rough wind. Seasonal surges, a world in flux. Take the mask off, vote harder, put your mask on. Leave Twitter, wait not yet, ok yes now. Everything is finally fine, nothing will ever be fine again. As I tidy and cook for yet another Covid Christmas (it’s not over yet, stop pretending, get boosted and mask up), it feels just like the others. Déjà vu. The wheel of life is off its chain, spinning in air as we go nowhere.
Who will we be in 2023?
Will we be good? Can we be kind? Will we figure any of it out? Will the bleeding months shape themselves into something like chapters again, a structure that will help us tell our stories and store our memories? Will anything stick?
I have hopes, in spite of it all. I’d like to find a good friend or a great therapist. I want to explore Indian cooking and finally learn to knit. I’ll paint rooms and plant flowers. I’d like to write lots and read more. Finding joy is the goal, no matter how small. Tiny bits of joy, like beads on a string, that I can wear at the end. I’d like to remember 2023 as an entity unto itself. As in, “2023 was the year I got my shit together.” Hopes are high.
In these last, short days of 2022 (the three-year year), I’m going to lay a little groundwork for 2023 me. A scheduled massage, all four kids in my house, and (hopefully by December 31) inbox zero. This is my wish, for all of us - touch, love, and space. May you find yours.
Cheers!
Lisa
Things to share:
I am thrilled to be included in a TueDo list, over on The Tue Night Social.
I’m racing through Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss, remembering the pleasure of a compulsively readable book.
Jacqueline Dooley captures her year in one word: Menopause. I love reading women who effectively capture their experience. We need to talk about it, normalize the range of possibilities, because it can get - in Dooley’s words - “really fucking weird.” Oh yes it can.
Love this essay about aging, another quality personal piece on Medium.
My quest to try the queen’s cocktail seems to be the most unoriginal idea on the planet. I can’t find a bottle of Dubonnet anywhere “because of the queen,” says the liquor store lady. We humans are so peculiar. (You’d think there’d be more now that the palace doesn’t need to stock it).
This album is helping me glide through the holiday chores. It soothes the frantic December mind.
Nailed it.
I'm always thrilled when a new edition of your newsletter arrives; I brew a fresh kettle of tea and dig in. Thoughts on the passing year feel especially poignant. I too hope that 2023 is the year I get my shit together. Cheers to the upcoming new year!