We Just Crowned

January 12. 2014

Dear Readers,

I'm blaming the recent Polar Vortex for throwing me completely off my New Year intention of picking one day a week to post and connect with the This Being Alive community. 

Anyway, I've been thinking,

Betsy, you need structure
Make a plan, stick to it
You showed up every single day for a year
Get a grip on the OCD, ADD, BED symptoms
Stop blaming the weather
FOCUS.

I didn't even write on New Year's Day, to share our tradition of scribbling hopes and dreams on leaves or bark and sending them sailing in the cold, icy water of the Delaware River/

we changed it up this year



thank you Michael,

and went into NYC to walk the very chilly streets of Greenwich Village, where rather than floating our dreams down river, each of us slipped our card somewhere in Washington Square Park, my old neighborhood. I put mine in a crack in the fountain wall more wishes on the back with the hope that it would become a gift to a passerby who needed a wishing card? Michael left his dreams in the branches of the big tree at the park entrance. Claire found a secret spot.

On the way out of the city we did a drive-by of the tree at Rockefeller Center, finding ourselves in the middle of madness, crowded streets + traffic jams. We caught a glimpse of the tree,

see it?

and then turned to head across town. Traffic stopped. The magic feeling of our walk in the Village, the leaving of the wish cards, our simple meal at Portobello's on Thompson Street leaked out of me as the ambulance + police car pushed their way through our already jammed street. How the hell did we end up in the heart of Times Square, wrong turn indeed, where millions of frozen, out of their minds people had stood in the bitter cold the night before waiting for the ball to drop.

"I made a wrong turn going this way," Michael said.
"It feels like we're squeezing through a birth canal."

Then the light turned green, Michael navigated through the crowds, we pushed west, everyone breathed easier, especially me, 

Miss Feeling Squeezed in the Birth Canal.






















Claire said, 

Well, I think we just crowned. 

out of the mouths of fourteen year olds

here's to a new year

birthing ourselves

again and again

note: there are no wrong turns.