Happy New Year and a Half

New Year feels more like the middle of the year to me. The feeling derives from measuring time in school years and the passing of summer vacations. I went to boarding school. I remember the last two weeks of August shopping for new shoes, name tags going into clothing, having farewell encounters with summer friends by the lake or around the pool, with nothing left to say when it was time to go home except I’ll see you at Christmas. Maybe I will. By then, who knows? Everything started over in September.

I became aware of time in those boarding school days. I tracked it carefully, in increments of school semesters, between seeing my family again. Homesick at the outset, I would count the weeks until the next break—usually five or six—while lying in my dorm bed, staring at the ceiling, hands behind my head. For many years afterward, what took place inside those blocks was fresh in my mind. It felt possible to recap my life five weeks at a clip going back to age thirteen. Give me a minute, and I might be able to recall a few bundles of it today.

Time carries us along as a passenger when we are young. We reach out our hand, someone takes it, and off we go, being deposited at stops and appointments along the way. Then we get calendars. It is interesting how our first many years seem to go on forever when we are less aware of time and its uses. These postcards I write draw on childhood experiences as if they were a bottomless trove of memories. In truth, I have been a grandfather now for nearly as long as I was a child. The oldest grandchild will be ten this year. On his bed, staring at the ceiling, his memories stretch back until they disappear into the fog of his beginnings. It seems infinite. Perhaps it is. It is a minute ago to the rest of us with calendars.

Vacation people divide into two main camps: July and August. We were always August vacation people, specifically the last two weeks of August. This added to the sense of September as the start of the new year. Loading up the family car with the duffle bags, fishing rods, tennis rackets, coolers, and bicycles, tossing in stray foul weather jackets and umbrellas, and assembling the pets—these were watershed moments. Summary moments. Ultimate moments. They were the wrap-up to the year, which was coming to a close, punctuated with a firm period of the family together.

Family vacation is a postcard musing on its own. But here is a quick story: we had two cats, Currier and Ives. The names were Marcia’s idea. Typically brilliant. Ives was like a dog—affectionate, needy, responsive. Currier was like a cat—aloof, disparaging, you-sit-there-I’ll-sit-over-here, thank you very much. The car was loaded. Ives was in; Currier escaped under the house we had rented in the mountains. We crawled on our bellies, made trails of Meox Mix, made concession after concession with no response. We could see Currier under the house. He could see us. He simply licked his paws. A true Freedom Caucuser as ever was. In the end, we left. Marcia had to drive back the three and half hours the next day to retrieve him when we knew he would be sitting at the door, angry about a night without dinner and a comfy spot on the chair.

We do not take family vacations anymore of that sort; the children drive the crowded SUVs these days loaded with modern appliances such as video screens, sliding doors, and built-in coolers. We are not in school, but the grandchildren are, and our schedules remain somewhat fixed to theirs. Schools and summer vacation. When can we hope to see everybody? What grade are the children going into? Goodness, they are so grown-up. Are you excited, we ask? No? Oh, well, still, third grade is a big step. My third-grade teacher was Ms. (we called them Miss) Anthony. I was as tall as she was, which is about how tall you are now. Isn’t that funny? She was really short.

That is what I remember from truly long ago. And way back then, one thing is sure, I never fathomed the year Two Thousand and Twenty-Three. Orwell had only recently fathomed Nineteen Eighty-Four. What person or child had their eye to the glass to see as far ahead as Twenty-Twenty-Three?

But here we are, thank goodness. Happy New Year! Happy New Year-and-a-half! May it be filled with warm memories bouncing off your ceiling, may your children and grandchildren strengthen and prosper, your pets come when you call them, and everything fit back in the car when it is time to go home.