A fresh start

Happy birthday, 2021

I’ve got to admit it’s getting better/ A little better all the time

(It can’t get no worse)

The thing about the new year is that it gives us all a chance to start over. To begin again. As if hope smiles on each first day of January, whispering, “It will be happier.”

There will be many resolutions made today, for good reason. Today is a kind of secular Easter, because it’s a chance for renewal. And what better person to renew than ourselves?

Some of us will vow to go to church more often, starting Sunday, and a fitting resolution that is. People all over the land will stop smoking. For now. They’re going to lose weight, starting after the holidays. They’re going to eat more fish, after today’s cabbage and blackeyed peas are finished off.

On Saturday, or at least Monday, the gym will be full. Along with losing weight, people want to feel better. And nobody feels bad after a good workout and a well-earned sweat.

You can almost hear pens scratching the hopes and dreams for 2021. We’re going to save $200 a month for that trip next year. And take a Spanish class at the local community college. And limit the caffeine to just one cuppa joe in the morning. We can stop smoking and start exercising on any day of the year, but it just makes it easier to point to a moment in time when the calendar changes. Silly mankind.

And brilliant mankind. No telling what th’ heck a “messenger RNA” is, but the scientists say it’ll be used to stop covid-19 before long. Which is only one reason that 2021 is getting better all the time. We want concerts again. We want movie theaters again. We want full stands at football and basketball games again. We want folks elbow-to-elbow in the bleachers of a perfect June day again, watching the players chase down bunts again, explaining a circle change again, to our better 7/8ths again.

We want church again. We want chicken spaghetti dinners on Sunday afternoons with strangers again. We want buffets at restaurants again. We want Fleetwood Mac again, with Lindsey Buckingham again, if possible.

They say we’ll get much of that in 2021, again. If not the complete Fleetwood Mac lineup.

None of it can come fast enough for the stir-crazy. Or at least the stirbored.

What else do we want? What else did we wish upon The Christmas Star last week, besides billions of effective covid-19 vaccine doses? Well, let’s start by subtraction:

Less Twitter would be good. Fewer conspiracy theories. Less of a need to debunk them, over and over again. Fewer protests and riots, but even better: Less reason for them. Fewer police shootings, but even better: Less reason for them, too.

Fewer polls, please. After the last few elections, there should be fewer pollsters, at least. Those who weren’t fired might have resigned out of embarrassment.

How about a lessening national debt? Or is that wishful thinking? It doesn’t have to be, if We the People will demand a better accounting from our representatives in the federal city. We hope that 2021 isn’t the year that the outlandish spending in the last 20 years finally catches up to the United States. As a friend said the other day, if it never catches up, and this kind of spending is able to go on forever, it’ll mark the first time in world history.

How about less Russia, fewer Russian hacks, less China, fewer outrages from China’s repression of its own people? And not just its own. Lately we’ve heard less and less from North Korea, and for that we give thanks.

And how about some additions to the world in 2021? Such as more happy babies, only temporarily unhappy as they scream to the tops of their lungs during church services. A favorite preacher once told a congregation, during such a fit in the pews, that screaming babies are the signs of a healthy church. Amen, brother.

Certainly we’ll see more anniversaries and graduations and births and riveting books and entrancing new gadgets. The other day, we played a word game with a group of kids on the computer, and some of them were in another town.

How about more of these words in the coming year: “Welcome home!” There have been so many who have been unable to visit friends, family, favorite places since, oh, about March. How about more sounds of cars driving up on the driveway. And doors slamming. And kids jumping into arms of grandparents.

How about more festivals, or any festivals? We want the Jonquil Festival in Washington, Ark., the Watermelon Festival in Hope, Ark., and the World’s Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Hot Springs. Also, we want our state fair back.

And, please, more movies and concerts and ball games. We want things to start over, to renew again. And are looking forward to it.

Upon a birthday: if this life of ours Be a good glad thing, why should

we make us merry Because a year of it is gone? but Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year

to come

Whispering ‘It will be happier.’

— Alfred Lloyd Tennyson Happy new year, Gentle Reader. As the Irish say, may the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past.

Now, where are those black-eyed peas?