December 27, 2007
Thursday

Twice already this Holidailies season I’ve used the busy (and tapped-out-of-ideas) column writer’s strategy of posting a “classic” piece dressed up with a new introduction. Tonight I am doing a modified version of the same thing. I’m taking a passage from one post each month this year, generally the first post in a month. Read one after the other, they might give a sense of the flavor of this annus mirabilis in my life.

January 14, 2007 — Let’s Go! Something keeps pushing at me to put more color and image into my work, to keep an illustrated journal, not just lines of black text on ordinary notebook paper. I got my hands into watercolors and acrylics, colored inks and iridescent gel pens on black paper.

February 1, 2007 — There Is Still a Light That Shines on Me I’m like a cat when it comes to place. The contours and the colors and even the remembered odors of a place hold memory for me. . . .  when I walk up that long cascading set of steps [at the high school I attended], pull open the red door, and step into the foyer dominated by the stained glass windows honoring Saint Maria Goretti and Saint Dominic Savio, I am seventeen again . . . . 

March 9, 2007 — Sail on Silvergirl Today is my birthday. I am 60 years old. . . .I’m not my grandmothers’ 60, I’m not my mother’s 60. I’m my own 60, sailing into the best ten years of my life.

April 8, 2007 — Sunrise My life is changing, and every day I get a different reminder of that fact. . . . I’m on my way to a new yes in my life. I experienced Easter in a different way this morning. I gathered thoughts of all whom I love, all I have been to them and they to me, all that we yet can be, and I said holy, holy.

May 15, 2007 — Feather Crowns I’ve heard the new liturgy from the cranberry book (at least the one of a dozen included settings that Tree of Life’s worship committee chose) twice now, and I have to say, well, I hate it. . . . I can’t accommodate any more change right now.

June 11, 2007 — Always Books in My Room When I was in third grade my parents gave me a red pencil box that looked like a book, with “Knowledge is Power” stamped in gold on the lid. I kept lists of books I’d read and ones I wanted to read in it, and ideas for stories, mostly about a girl who lived on a horse ranch in Wyoming and solved mysteries after school with her twin brother. It was, I suppose, my first journal.

July 1, 2007 — I Said July The writing prompt for this day from the Judy Reeves book I use is “the possibilities are endless.” Oh yes they are. Let’s go.

August 20, 2007 — We Were Young, We Were Merry I was in my mid-twenties when I came [to the Bread Loaf School of English]. Life at Bread Loaf was like life in a dorm without houseparents, parietal rules, or alcohol restrictions. There was always a crackling fire and a good conversation or two in the Barn, volleyball on the lawn, word games in the parlor (seriously). . . .  It was like a commune full of literature freaks, summer camp for the artsy-weirdsy.

September 26, 2007 — Grace  Maybe I’m not at the end of a single annus mirabilis. Maybe I’m only at the end of one in a series in an age of miracles in my life, a life graced by joy, by love, by an unlimited abundance. May I never forget that.

October 20, 2007 — The Last Waltz My favorite fall poems are about loss and change, and that will certainly be on my mind as we drive. For when we get to East Stroudsburg, we’ll be attending the last Millersville University Lady Marauder field hockey game of the 2007 season, the last time Senior Forward #11 Lynn DeAngelis will take the field in the service of this or any other school team.

November 17, 2007 — Taken By The Sky I do believe the sky is bigger [in Wyoming]. As I crossed the bridge over Lower Piney Creek, a prairie falcon glided over the water. I watched it rise until it had cleared the roof of the house. The turquoise sky studded with white clouds was almost too brilliant for me to look at.

December 3, 2007 — Like a Flame The soft contours of Bread Loaf [Mountain in Vermont] remind me of my past, of the place that has nurtured me as a writer, as a reader, as a woman of courage and determination. The jagged young energy of Loaf Mountain [in Wyoming] shows me my future. I have stories to tell, books to write, mountains yet to dance upon like a flame.

To my readers, thank you, once more, for reading so much, so often.