First an apology: in my last email, dated Dec. 12, 2025, I celebrated the work of poet Rosemerry Trommer, a lovely thing to do, except that in that email I spelled her name wrong. I called her Rosemerry Trotter – a fine name – just not her name – and perhaps not anybody’s name at all! I apologize for this, to her, to her fans and family, and to you. She is a gift to our world and I feel terrible that I mis-named her, and led you all astray. To find her work, which is so so worth doing, please visit: https://www.wordwoman.com/
And, so, the new year begins. Just as imperfectly and humanly as all the ones before.
Bill Vaughan once wrote: “An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”
Mark Twain said: “New Year’s Day…now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”
But the thought I am considering most on this cold, clear, snow-filled day is from Ellen Goodman: “We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.”
It would be wonderful, wouldn’t it, to begin this year with a story that isn’t just about what we aren’t, or can’t do, or haven’t done, or how hard it all is…but a story of what is yet possible. I find myself dis-interested in tales that are too shiny and glittery and optimistic – there is simply too much harm in this world to wear impossibly rosy glasses. But nor am I interested in tales that only offer us misery, darkness, fracture. There is always more to us and more to this world than the worst of us.
I’m choosing instead, in a world mad with abuses of power and violence, to shape a story (even in these early days) that honors what is good and broken within me. One that acknowledges flaws, my missteps and misunderstandings, but does not deny the decency I strive to bring. One that holds the world in it’s messy and chaotic tumults while honoring it’s generosities. Yesterday a friend brought flowers to another friend who was suffering – gorgeous, radiant roses. Today a few of us drive together to honor the life of a woman we loved who, despite years of dementia, never stopped leading from kindness. Every day we bake the bread of compassion, pour the tea of care, stitch cloaks of love in our small choices to move forward with tender attention to what heals, what helps, and what builds.
And through those stories, through our attention to what is working, what does sustain us, what is possible, we keep lit a gentle light…one that reminds us always that any one day, any one new years day can be shaped and refined to tell a more whole and rich and enlivening story.
And in the spirit of this light and as a gift, here is Rosemerry’s Jan. 1 poem:
At the End of the Year
January 1, 2026 by Rosemerry Trommer
Just after midnight
we stand beside the stove
holding each other,
your thumb slowly relearning
the portal of my spine.
Satie’s first Gymopédie
slips stepwise through the room,
the tune like starlight emerging
after a storm blew down all the trees.
We are almost, but not quite, still.
How little movement it takes,
plus an opening in the mind,
to know the body as dancing.
How little beauty it takes
to know a sad moment
as a moment both sad and beautiful.
And what of a year? What of a life?
How much beauty can we bring
with the days we are given?
How would the years change
if we believed we were not
just moving through them,
but dancing?
