Year’s end
Years end.
The year ends in — in what? I was going to type “heaviness.” The heaviness of sodden garbage on a Manhattan sidewalk. The heaviness of loneliness, of confusion.
Heaviness of heart.
Or the year ends in safety. L.O.L. Surprise dolls and Barbies lie throughout the living room — couch, coffee table, floor — in post-Christmas prostration. Helen plays at the kitchen table with kinetic sand. “I mixed in the gold so it sparkles, Mom.” In the distance, a siren; here in the apartment, just Bluey on the iPad and the soft murmur of Helen’s internal dialogue as she plays.
The year ends in fireworks. A friend once told me that New Yorkers are obsessed with fireworks and I didn’t understand the level of that obsession until I felt the sky rumble and shake for ten minutes, twenty, thirty. Layer upon layer of blast, of roar, the shaking louder than sound itself.
Helen was already asleep, and in bed beside her, I closed my eyes to the noise and could see explosions. Bombing. Fire. Celebration mimicking genocide. Genocide mimicking celebration.
The year ends in fireworks.
A year ago, a neighbour’s midnight fireworks scared the two cats I had just put outside, unthinking. Kicky and Crazy, brothers born to a feral mother under our porch in the spring and patiently befriended by me and Helen. They were watching me through the kitchen window from their perch on the potting bench, and then bang and they were gone.
All that night and into the morning, a new year, I was sure they were close to home. Spooked.
The wild lynx, which sat on a corner of the porch on many cold December nights, undeterred by loud shouting and wildly flailing arms, unfazed by the frozen tomatoes I threw, was still in the area, leaving tracks through the snowy yard. A dark shadow in the winter night.
We called Crazy and Kicky, day after day, night after night, until we realized that the lynx was gone. It left when its prey was killed.
Years end.
Earlier that winter, I went out to the woodshed at night (keep the house warm keep the child safe) and my headlamp picked up the eyes of the lynx. Close by in the falling snow, watching me, its glowing eyes reflecting the light. I yelled, lunged at it, tried to prove I was unafraid.
It turned its head from me and slowly moved away.
The year ends.
When Helen was two, I knew if I was still married when the year ended, I would be trapped in that marriage forever. For days, weeks, months, every moment, I felt the end of the year approach, the window of escape get smaller.
I moved through life, played with my toddler, chatted with customers, kept up the motions, and every minute, I felt the year getting shorter. Knowing it had to end, I had to get out, but fearing the moment of escape. Fearing hatred, desperation, violence.
On the last day of the year, when the window was so small, so dark, I said, “We need to talk.”
Years end in heaviness.
Years end in safety.
New years begin.
