Punctuation Needed
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
With even the best intentions, my blog fell silent these past two weeks while I travelled to South Carolina to visit family and to New York for a quick respite. Amid lost luggage, cancelled flights, and the flu; it proved to be an eventful holiday season, subsequently ending very warmly with the ones dearest to me.
Despite all this activity, I found ample time to reflect, as one is wont to do at year end, about just what kind of year 2007 was and about the places and the faces that are now known and unknown to me. And ultimately, 2007 chalked up to be quite the bittersweet year indeed.
It was with this realization that a quote from Zora Neale Hurston resonated: “there are years that ask questions and years that answer.” Now, I never thought of a year like that- as a question or an answer- but what better way to put the lid on 12 months of seeking and discovery than with the simplest forms of punctuation?
As it turns out, the last year gave answers to questions I hadn’t realized I’d asked. In 2007, I came to terms with the clichéd effects of my dad’s missing love. In 2007, my soul came “home” on a birthday trip to London. And in 2007, I finally learned when to say “when.”
It occurs to me that answers like those don’t come along very often and that I should give them more appreciation than this current bittersweet avowal. But it also occurs to me that 2008 ought then to be a year to ask some new questions instead. And with that, I look forward to the months ahead.
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