New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week, you can begin paving hell with them as usual. (Mark Twain)

              Mother believed my arrival would come a full month earlier:  December, 1948.  I refused, I guess, bullheaded and stubborn within the womb. Instead, I greeted 1949, 13 days in, 1 day after my mother’s own birthday. We share the warm, bright garnet as a birthstone, in contrast to this cold month.

                              The Roman god Janus reigned at the passage between then and yet to be.  His faces, two of them, looked to the past and to the future simultaneously. His name is etched into the Gregorian calendar that we use:  January, the first month of the New Year celebrating opportunity for fresh beginnings.
                    Perhaps it is because I’ve spent the better part of my life with a school calendar that I treasure January.  Shutting down the old and starting up the new is a pattern inherent within school calendars. January boasts opportunity to start anew.
                       I look for opportunity to right the wrongs of yesterday with a chance to get it right “next year.” Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow, according to Albert Einstein(e=mc²).
                   The traditional Southern New Year’s Day meal will be served all day January 1 with ham and cornbread on the side.  White beans with ham, boiled cabbage, black-eyed peas are mainstays each New Year’s Day.

 According to folklore, this Southern tradition dates back to the Civil War, when Union troops pillaged the land, leaving behind such as might be used as animal fodder. Rich in nutrients, these were the humble foods that enabled Southerners to survive. Each dish combines to celebrate a communion bound by grateful hearts and renewed hope for good things yet to come.
                       Today, January 1, 2014. I look back and am grateful. I’ll correct what went awry. No “do-overs” but a chance to “do-right,” or at least better. Being realistic, I rarely make resolutions, for I know my tendency toward weak will-power.  I do, however, plan to learn from yesterday’s goofs and attempt to do a better job regarding health and relationships.
                       When my birthday arrives, I’ll follow the trail blazed by friends’ footsteps, friends whose encouragement will continue to shout that age is just a number.  I will glide gracefully into age 65, displaying that Red, White, and Blue ID the next time I’m “carded.”