In A Word

I had lunch last week with a friend who has the ability to slow down time. I can’t explain it any further than that. I just know when it happens and am humbly grateful for it.

I also have a small crack in the heel of my left walking boot, making this morning’s stroll through the swampy paths back to the woods a soggy one, despite the plastic bread bag I slid over the sock on my left foot. Two socks left the mudroom dry. Only one returned.

A few weeks ago, I sat at my studio table facing the backside of a painted-on canvas, contemplating my guiding word for the new calendar year and determined to set it down on a “vision board” in collage format (there are parties for this, gathering people together around food and supportive conversation, anticipating how the word each of us selects will keep us grounded, focused and on track as we make another trip around the sun. It’s a reassuring way to step into the unknown). I save gardening magazines for this purpose, along with a few home improvement and flea market decor-themed ones because they tend to offer the best font options in their advertisements and the colors are pretty. Choosing the year’s word, though, is a bit more involved.

In past years, I’ve tried on “humility”, “focus”, “relax” and “creativity” (that last one felt like cheating; I’m steeped in creativity every single day. Isn’t the word o’ the year supposed to make one stretch beyond their current comforts? I’ll have to consult the nonexistent rule book on that) but none of them ever deepened in meaning as the year unfolded. Like a dieting new year’s resolution, previously selected words fell off the edge of the table before the snow melted and by September I’d forgotten what I was thinking in those wee hours of January when everything was new and accomplishable. But this year, things felt different. Five months into a new job, reinserting myself into the urban dynamic by way of a twice-weekly bus commute as far from the secluded embrace of our land as I never imagined I’d ever be, feeling a heady mix of familiar and strange all at once, 2024’s word was inspired and came effortlessly: Connection.

I’ve added 33 new people to my life just during the workweek days alone, sitting in meetings with fellow decision-makers whose world view and opinions are vastly different from my own but we’d never know it based on the common ground we share. With so much division, rancor and vitriol poisoning our morning hot beverages as we start our days scrolling or turning paper pages from one bit of bad news to the next, “connection” feels like a salve, a cotton blanket warm from the dryer to wrap ‘round shoulders weary from the weight of it all. It’s an urgent, whispered directive to keep looking for the good, to presume benevolent intention and allow for the raw, unfinished business we all carry around with us to be forgivable context for the choices we regret making in front of others. We’re hungry for that kind of grace but feel awkward asking for it. Bridging the chasms between us over lunch or a hot matcha latte seems like a good place to start.

So I’m putting the brakes on judgment, sending text and voicemail messages to friends and coworkers I haven’t seen in five months, asking for time to meet over food in a noisy pub or on a Sunday late afternoon phone call. We fill in the gaps with stories that melt the distance between us and end our time together with the promise of more time together (food optional, hugs expected). I’m making good on my promise to forget where my phone is and wander off toward the woods where the trees are swaying hypnotically in a wind none of us predicted. When I close my eyes, I feel them pulling me into their rhythm and drop the last remnants of tension that followed me on the walk. The rough and wet bark of a red oak against my cheek is enough to remind me of my Place in the world and I leave behind the echoes of a heart overflowing with appreciation for my luck to even be here. The water that soaks my sock is now a sacred foot-washing moment, as far from uncomfortable as I can get.

Lunch with my time-slowing friend was the first of many connections I am well on my way to making as we round January’s corner into the month of Love. I’m not checking them off any list but adding them to the talisman bundle I carry with me beneath my skin, protection against the despair that isolation brings. There’s so much and so many I still don’t know. But this year, I’ll do all I can to meet them, to learn from them and be different because of them.

And just because I can, I’m going to teach myself how to knit.