A Strange Year

As years of our lives go, this has been a weird one. Peppered with everything you can think of, good and bad, it leaves a more bitter than sweet taste in my mouth than many others before it.

We have known a lot of trials and pain this year. More than any other years, we have known pain, suffering, and unhealth in our own lives and the the lives of those close to us. Even in the lives of remote relatives and friends, for some reason, we have seen more sickness than health. Our loved ones have been through some close calls, and we have, too.

Our friends and family have lost pets and aunts and uncles, some of them parents and brothers. There should really be no ranking for pain. Pain is pain – however close or remote it is from you. It's been a great year of loss for many of us and around us.

And then, there was our house, a brand new one poorly built, and our efforts to keep it from falling apart. We weathered two hurricanes in one month while fixing leaks everywhere. We think we're OK now, but the stress of all that just about moved us to a rental place. We would have been grateful that we could have done that!

Stressful trips of planes and luggage lost or delayed started off a year of travels.

As we age, we look closely at our friendships. We're more choosy and selective and this year we have felt the bitter-sweet taste of lost friends we once cherished. But you know what they say: “ A friend you lose is not worth keeping, in the first place.” So, we learn, we mourn, and we move on, grateful for the lessons.

All this personal stuff happened on a backdrop of more chaos in the country and in the world. My heart cries every day for the status of things in the world, but especially in this country. A country that so many of us gave up so much for, only to come here and bleed disappointment. We are now the perpetrators, the cruel and heartless inhumane power, we are now the illogical, anti-everything-reason monsters we were trying to fight a while ago. I wish there would be something someone can do drastically. I wish we would stop hiding behind lame and cheesy political excuses and would truly take action that would help people. Hungry, homeless, abused, defenseless people. Children, even.

I wish we would stop speaking in double standards: I wish we would stop saying in this country that 'no man is above the law' in the same sentence with 'you cannot indict a sitting president.' I wish we would stop saying we are the greatest democracy in the world when our simple, most fundamental right as a citizen, the right to vote, is not a democratic one. I wish we would really stop lying to ourselves in false patriotism and truly understand what we see in the mirror.

And I wish we truly remember who we truly are: I wish we would remember that if it were not for the thousands of 'illegals from sh*thole countries' most of us would not be here today. I wish we remembered who we were and how we and ours have started.

The talk of this wall recently is making me double over with stomach sickness. Besides being grossly unreasonable and downright laughable (a stupid dream concoction of an old and sick mind), it is not what the world is and wants today. And let me tell you some reasons why: I have a bowl of oranges in the kitchen; the bowl was given to me by my sister's Romanian mother-in-law who has been living in Germany for close to 20 years; I got a message right before Christmas from a high school (Romanian) friend who is now a doctor who lives in Denmark: she wanted my American recipe of turkey and stuffing so she can cook it for her family this year. I work from home. Before 10 AM every morning I am in anywhere between 1 and 4 meetings with Armenia every day. If you look at my Facebook page, I have friends from four continents and this is the norm for most of us, not the exception. You see, the world is already border-less, in people's minds. No wall, and I don't believe no law, could stop that now. Dreaming of it is dystopian and a huge waste of energy and time to say the very least.

I never started my days with news first, like I have this year. Because I am always very afraid there might not be a world we could go back to any day now … Some days truly feel hopeless. I have read more about hope and gratitude this year than any other year. I think we all could use some of this reading nowadays.

There have been happy times, too. Seeing my ever weakening and feeble elders in Romania this past spring was a bright spot, however painful. Getting to hold them and hug them was a treat that I will savor for many months, possibly years to come. Taking a trip with my sister to New York City and welcoming her into her fourth decade was another blessful gift.

My husband and I took trips to know our new state, and we visited The Grand Canyon for the first time together. Taking my nephews to the Ocean together for the first time and seeing them jump waves was one of the highlights of this year.

We loved, we gave, we spent time with dear and true friends and family whether in our new and not-so-perfect house or their open homes. We have been grateful for jobs, the one we got and the one we kept this year, for the stress of not having them is a true and scary burden.

When I started this year I committed to collecting a picture every day of the year. Just to remind myself how much beauty truly is in the world and to document how much one could travel and grow and enrich oneself even in sad times.

Click the picture below to see the pictures from the last month of the year, as well as all the other 300+ ones. I am grateful for every glimpse of this. Enjoy!

It's been a year with ups and downs, framed by sickness and pain. A social media meme showed this message this morning and this is my only wish for all of us for 2019: “I don't want 2019 to bring me anything. I just don't want it to take anything away.” Amen to that and a happier, more hopeful new year to all!