Dark clouds, heavy, angry, threatening cast their gloom over the coming dawn: a foreboding of the coming year?

First light, first day of the week, first day of the year. Four score of those years behind me.

i don’t fear that foreboding. In fact, i laugh at it. As bad as the world seems in dealing well with other countries, factions, religions, political parties, any thing different from them, i am beyond that. Those four score years have earned me the right to choose to be beyond. Folks, people i have run across in my life are my concern. i wish to treat them right, equally. And i wish to live well for as long as i can live.

This idea has been percolating for a while. It burst out into the open Christmas Day.

The decorations are down and stored. Christmas is over. Not so with some neighbors. Their choice. i’m ready to move on.

i was introduced to new word on the day after Christmas: Saudade. It is of Portuguese in origin. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.” i can relate to that. i have always wanted to go to Portugal. Since early on, i have found it intriguing, dark, mysterious, with an understanding of life. Perhaps, this is just an illusion of mine, but i would like to find out.

The word fits my illusion, i think.

i gave my bride a Native American wedding vase used in many Southwest tribal marriage ceremonies. Brilliant, i must say. i stumbled across the idea of such when i wrote my short, short story ending with a poem, “Take Me Up on the Mountain.” When the old man marries a Kumeyaay maiden, they held two ceremonies, one Catholic, the other Kumeyaay. researching my trusted, non-academic Wikipedia, i read the Kumeyaay, a local tribe in the Southwest corner used such a vase in their ceremonies:

The Wedding Vase is used in the traditional (Kumeyaay) wedding ceremony. The two spouts represent the bride and the groom with the bridge between them uniting the two. Water blessed by the medicine man is poured into the vessel. During the ceremony, the bride and groom each drink from their side of the vase.

and

…Each spout represents one member of the couple; the handle in the middle of a wedding vase represents the unity as they come together on their wedding day. The space between the handle and the two spouts is a representation of the couples’ circle of life.

i added: “I am old enough to no longer need presents even though i enjoy them as gifts from you and your lasting love. That love is the greatest gift i have ever received in my life.I am old enough to longer need presents even though i enjoy them as gifts from you and your lasting love. That love is the greatest gift i have ever received in my life.”

Maureen gave me a card with a gift i had spoiled again this year. She sees something i want or need, orders it, wraps it, and then i say i need this or that and start out to buy it. So she tells me not to buy it. i won’t relate what the card read. Maureen is much more discreet and private than i am. It makes her even more alluring, of course. However, i can inform you her card to me had almost identical thoughts as my card to her.

Now, Maureen and i aren’t always alike. For example, she doesn’t like Tennessee Pride Country Sausage. i’m not particularly fond of gussied up chicken. But there are a lot of things in which we are alike. Most importantly, our core thoughts and beliefs are about as close as a twosome could have. That’s what i discovered in a talk we had 43 years ago. The important stuff. It’s still the same.

i am a lucky man. Never won a lottery. But i am lucky in a different way.

So dark clouds with your ominous projection of the coming year, disburse. Go away. Already in mid-morning, the sun is shining.

i hope all of you have a wonderful, prosperous, and healthy (one of the more important facets of living at my age) 2024 and the wide-spread trend of inhumanity towards others at least subsides a little bit.