January

It's January 7th, 2011, and I had thought that by now we would all be zipping around with solar-powered jet-packs on our backs. Or riding along in trains that take you to places where there are shared electrical vehicles waiting to get you to each other's houses. Or traveling through a pneumatic tube network where you climb in and snonk out at any given destination. It is a disappointment to me that we are still tootling around burning oil and crashing into each other at high speeds on corroding highways.

Still, I am profoundly grateful to be here on January 7th, 2011.

Back in January 7th, 2010, I am having my first chemotherapy infusion, hooked up to receive a concoction that I hope will allow me to revisit the memory for many years to come. I am not more frightened in January 2010 than I will be, in my secret heart, in January 2011. Back in 2010 it is good to know that I have ammo. In 2011 most of what I have is hope -- though I'm glad for the gift, I liked having those chemical bullies on my side a year ago.

January 7th, 2009, and my sister-in-law, Ruthie, is still alive as the sun rises. She can no longer speak to us, but is visibly working through something in her mind. In her final days, she seems to be staring at the face of Mystery, examining it with both wonder and consternation. She dies in her sister's arms late this morning.

I pause from this writing to tell my beloved sister Ellen that I would feel lucky to die in her arms. May it happen many years from now.

January 2009, and my mom is still alive, though she will take us all by surprise by dying of a stroke next month. She tells me she isn't sure what her "assignment' is now that Pop is gone. She says she is not lonely, as she talks to Pop all the time -- but that for the first time in her life she is bored. I do not grasp how important that is, how much it conveys her readiness to go.

January 2008, and both parents are still here. We are taking a slow walk around their neighborhood, bundled against the cold. I am holding Pop's arm, and he is talking about how tired he is getting lately. He stops to sketch a goose floating on the cold river.

The years go by, and in memory they can go forward or backward. 2007, 2002, 2006, 2005, 2003, 2004, 2001. There are bright spots of a remembered moments, but even the most recent decade is already blurring. At the age of 85, my mom wrote an autobiographical essay. There is all of one byte devoted to raising us: "The honeymoon cost 37 dollars and we took a week of side trips into New Hampshire and Vermont," she writes. "The next era was the fastest. . . . A blaze of babies, diapers (I thought I'd never outgrow them.) PTA meetings, 4H club, winding up with teaching and College loans. Some day I may embroider this, but now it's a blur that has passed in the time it takes to type it. The grandchildren trooped along so close behind that I sometimes confuse the generations."

Ellen and I read Mom's essay together. Our response is in unison: "What the heck!?" It's like playing a major role in a movie that runs for 50 years and then finding out you've been edited down to a walk-by cameo.

January 2000, and I will turn 45 in the fall. Since I was a child, I have been imagining the arrival of the year 2000 and the strangeness of the possibility of being 45. The only strangeness as it happens is that it is not strange.

January 1993, and I am falling in love with Laura. I am terrified of what this may mean for my life. Glen and I can't find each other in the howling storm of feelings. That we lose our bearings so quickly stuns me, and I re-experience that shock for many years to come. I learn through this that all relationships are vulnerable. Not fragile: vulnerable.

January 1990, and Yani will be born this month. Ting is not yet three years old, and as we cuddle together in front of a fire she tells me what she remembers of her birth. There are vivid details she recounts that I never told her about. She looks at me and asks if she can go back in there once the baby comes out.

The kids and I are all home in January 1990 because I have left Trinity after 8 years. I leave Trinity because I am not sure who I am if I am not a dean there. That feels like such a hazardous sandtrap that I decide I ought to leave. Around this time I cut my long hair and the president of the college asks me why. "I felt too attached to it," I tell him. He tells me that is the most absurd thing he has ever heard. It still feels right to me.

January 1984, and T'ai is a newborn. I am terrified to feel the depth of love I have for this child, to realize that for the first time in my life something, someone is carrying around the entirety of my heart. That my life, my sanity, my connection to the world seems to be in someone else's hands, and that if I were to lose him I would likely lose my mind. In 2011, I am still trying to figure out how to take my children off this hook, how to disentangle my happiness from theirs.

January 1979, and I am in Guatemala. Edmer's family gives me a beautiful wool poncho for Christmas. I am desperately homesick. I don't know how to get out of my relationship with Edmer, so I bring him home. He speaks very little English, is entirely dependent on me and loves me, too. Within weeks I see my mistake, see the brick wall I am steering toward. But I keep moving forward, driven by my fear of hurting him. It takes me a year and a half to find the courage to speak my truth. I begin to actively study courage and try to figure out how to nurture it in myself. Developing courage becomes a lifelong effort. I feel like it is remedial work.

January 1976, I am doing a work term in Cincinnati. I live by myself in a tiny apartment and get by for months on barley and cheese, cooked together on a small burner. Each night it is delicious. I walk home in the wintry dark from the Planned Parenthood where I am doing an internship. I have no phone and know no one in Cincinnati. Most evenings I do not speak a word. I sleep like a bear.

January 1973, and I have just finished high school a semester early. I am working at a bakery, and pride myself on not having a single bite of the goods. The last hour I work there, I pop a danish into my mouth, then a cookie. I walk home mad at myself for giving in to this small pleasure and theft.

January 1972, and I am in my bedroom listening to music and playing with the dripping wax of a candle. I do this for hours, and it is only in the retrospect of adulthood that I understand it as my first deliberate experience with trance.

January 1970, and I am a bopper hippie, wearing a black armband, marching against the war, and deep into Quakerism. This cold night I am playing ping-pong in the basement with Ellen and two friends. Between ping and pong, we are talking about life. I say that I love Everyone. Peter scoffs. "That's impossible," he says. He is so clearly my superior in verbal prowess, and I tearfully flounder as he challenges me, hard. Soon he sees his moment and says, "Do you love me, Paula?" I run out of the basement crying, "I HATE YOU!" I am so frustrated that I can't hang onto my little seed of conviction.

January 1967, I am 12 and have a wicked crush on Charlie Reyburn. I join the Episcopal church choir just to be near him, to hear his soprano solos. He never returns my interest. When we move my parents out of their house in January 2006, I see a day-glow heart with "P.C. + C.R." on my old bedroom ceiling. Some time in my 30s I see Charlie get off a train and kiss a woman. I feel a pang of longing that takes me by surprise.

January 1964, and we still live on the old farm. Mom asks us to polish the newly waxed floor by sliding around in our socks. Ellen and I put on Tchaikovsky's Italian Symphony and skid across the piano room floor. It is our favorite chore.

January 1963, I am eating small balls of snow that have matted my mittens. I am at the edge of the Joyces' pond, using a stick to get the ice out from the double blades of my skates. Soon I will graduate to single-bladed skates. I will miss the double-bladed ones for the rest of my life.

January 1960, and Ellen and I are playing "Bettie and Joan" in our adjacent twin beds as the snow falls outside. Joan is our mom's best friend. Ellen is so good to always let me be Bettie. Even at five years old, I realize her kindness, but I am unwilling to reciprocate and let her be Bettie now and then. It is the first time I am aware of hoping no one notices how selfish I am.

January 1955, and 6-year-old Lee, 4-year-old Kevie, and little Ellen are sleeping in the house. My parents are snuggling under the wool blanket in their double bed. This is as good a night to make another baby as any, and they do. That January night I am as tiny as can be, but already I hope to live.