For Auld Lang Syne

Posted on by Maia

new years2A new year is an untouched expanse of snow, a freshly sharpened pencil, a blank page. It’s a reminder that our lives begin again and again. Yet in the very first minutes of the fledgling year, many of us will gather among friends and strangers and sing an old song that invites us to reflect on old friends, past loves, our complicated, meandering, fraught personal and collective histories.

With each passing year we ask again, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot and days of auld lang syne?” Continue reading For Auld Lang Syne

Twinkly Lights

Posted on by Maia
photo by giveawayboy
photo by giveawayboy

One of my favorite things about this time of year is the twinkly lights. I love the light imagery abundant in the midwinter holidays—the strands woven through bushes and strung along eaves, the Hanukah and Advent and Saint Lucy candles, the Yule logs. For those of us who sometimes feel keenly the dark and the cold, the shadow parts of ourselves, those holiday lights are a tonic and reminder to stoke our own fires. Continue reading Twinkly Lights

What I Learned from Peter Pan: In Praise of Crowing

Posted on by Maia
photo by David Jones
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, London
photo by David Jones

One of my first heroes was Peter Pan. He was a kid who could go toe to toe with grownups—pirates, even. I liked the way he unabashedly crowed whenever he was pleased with himself, which was most of the time.  He bragged incorrigibly and unapologetically about the smallest achievement. The narrator doesn’t sugarcoat it:

“To put it with brutal frankness,” he says, “There never was a cockier boy.”

I envied Peter’s confidence. It thrilled me when he crowed,

“How clever I am! Oh, the cleverness of me!”

I longed for that kind of self-assurance, let along the audacity to stand on a chair and shout about it—the way Peter did at every opportunity. Continue reading What I Learned from Peter Pan: In Praise of Crowing