The In-between

It’s the Monday after Christmas and before the New Year.

Mid-evening to be precise. I have a glass of white wine and a handful of goldfish. French music is playing in the background – soft jazz, cocktail jazz – and I don’t understand a word of it, but I get the mood completely.

I love this week. It’s the great In-between, when you actually take a breath, wondering what’s next, and what just got completed. The holidays are tough, am I right? So much pressure to be always magic, always special, always available, always agreeable, always appreciative, always, always, always. And it’s a lot.

This year, ours came complete with a 3-foot unicorn, more crystal than there is in a Disney-on-Ice spectacular, more wine than there was at The Last Supper, I’m betting, and a truckload of hugs...and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

But the In-between, the time after it’s all been shared and successfully happy-making, is special. You can actually look back, just a few days or even hours, to new memories that were just made, new truces that were just established, old alliances that were just strengthened, forever loves that blossomed yet again.

I’m schmaltzy, I think we’ve established that. And everything, every moment, is an opportunity to wax poetic and look at the ongoing forever with a fresh eye.

The new year is only a few days away, and the last few New Years have been accompanied by large buckets of cold water. But that’s cool...or cold...and it’s all good because it’s all what it is. And we move on and create new and look back on what’s gone before and go,”Huh!”

So, I hope everyone had the December holiday that they wanted – high-octane or mellow-yellow – and I hope everyone has the New Year’s they imagine in their mind’s eye – big, loud, boisterous or quiet, internal, thoughtful. It’s all good. No wrong answers.

In the meantime, Happy Great In-between. Enjoy the one-week season. It only happens once a year.

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.

– Rainer Maria Rilke