Two doors

My mother always opened the front and back doors to our house at midnight on New Year’s Eve, to let in the new and let out the old.

I still do it to this day although she has long since passed. Her name was Mary but everyone called her May and May lives on I guess in all of her children, sometimes though small traditions like this one. I can no more let that tradition fade, than the memory of her face or her familiar and comforting scent when she softly kissed me.

We tend to make resolutions at this time of year – we banish the mistakes of yesteryear and promise to fulfil our potential in the tests to come.

I know my destiny is a mystery to me, but I also know that I tinker with it every day. Tomorrow will be no more or less that I allow it to be and the past holds lessons not regrets.

This year as always I opened both doors as the beautiful May once did and time flowed through our happy home, heading for the destiny we choose to seek.

The significance of the moment – that dramatic, singular, tick of the clock that swings us from one year to the next, is that we allow ourselves to dream of what might be possible… and what’s wrong with that?

I know what I want next year. I want the feelings that touched my heart and made me smile through the years to be my guiding light. I want to love more, smile more, laugh more. I want to kiss and be kissed hug and be hugged. Importantly I want to use the time I have been graced with to have value not just in the moment but later on reflection.

I’m sometimes serious, often frivolous but always filled with the spirit of the love, kindness and smiles that I have inherited from loved ones I have lost. I have the good fortune, to daily bask in the warm love of the kind hearts that surround me and keep me safe. So for them, May, Paddy and Brian, for those I love today and for me, I very much intend this to be a Happy New Year indeed…