New Year: First Times
By: Sara Ries Dziekonski
Blog #6
1/7/21
I love the New Year, how everything is a series of firsts: first meal of the new year, first shower, first time having sex, poem written, book read, walk, swim, etc. It feels, in a way, like we all get to be brand new again. I remember holding my newborn son on our porch on his fist day home from the hospital and wondering what he thought of the humid air, the ferns hanging all around us, the birdsong. I knew he would teach me how to look at everything again through fresh eyes and how, being brand new to everything, he has embarked on a journey of first times.
I wrote a New Year’s Poem two years ago called “Wedding Earring” where, on New Year’s Eve, I lost one of my wedding earrings. When my husband and I arrived at the party by foot, I noticed one ear felt light so we walked the thirty minutes back home to search for the sparkly dangling earring but couldn’t find it. I thought about going for another walk on New Year’s Day to see if I’d have better luck, but instead wrote a poem with these lines:
New Year’s Day:
I’m not going back to search
for anything.
To live is to lose things,
and sometimes not things,
but people.
When I wrote “sometimes not things, but people” I was thinking about how my friend’s husband had died just a few months prior to that and how I didn’t want to go back and search for a “thing” but rather, be in the present moment with the person who walks beside me: my husband, with his precious winged-heartbeats.
“New Year’s Day” by Kim Addonizio, one of my favorite poets, addresses love, loss, loneliness, and longing. You can find the poem here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42518/new-years-day-56d2211123c2e
Near the end of the poem, Addonizio writes: “Today I want to resolve nothing.” I love this so much because I think people often feel like they need to fix themselves, and that we need to change something to be good, and feel enough. In the poem, Addonizio seems to just accept things the way they are and embrace nature in the present moment instead making any resolutions.
This New Year, I want to go through this journey of first times really feeling it all.
I’ll end with this image of a poem-candle that I made out of beeswax. It has some 2021 wishes for you. (I hope you like danishes hehe.)
Happy New Year, everybody.
I hope 2021 brings you plenty of light and comfort.
Always with love,
Sara
