Three Strong Hints for New Years

“So Happy New Year! Don’t drink too much tonight, don’t talk to any boys and keep your legs crossed!”

This is what the checkout person at the grocery store said to me as she handed me my change.

Then she laughed. “That’s what my mother in Austria used to say to me every year at this time.”

Her remark was the ‘something small’ that made my day yesterday, a day of many errands outside the house and much cleaning and packing-up once I got home.

A poem I like very much begins “Make much of something small.  It cites “the cat coming in to the room, with one ear inside out.” Also

the elemental sediment
your broom has missed,
and lights each grain of sugar spilled
upon the tabletop, beside
pistachio shells, peel of a clementine…

“Slippers and morning papers on the floor” it goes on. It’s called “Bounty” and it comes from Robyn Sarah’s collection of poems, A Day’s Grace, published in 2003 by Porcupine’s Quill.

My ‘something small’ yesterday was what that woman said from her place behind the counter. That and the memory of the fires we made in the fireplace in the days surrounding Christmas. Today’s ‘something small’ will be whatever arises in my mind as we continue to put away Christmas for another year, little knowing where another Christmas may find us.

The poet’s advice is good and I would only add to it. “Talk to every stranger, and laugh every chance you get. And if you‘re intent on not partying too much ever, well, for heaven’s sake don’t work too much either!

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