Time is a definable point, which we note from our cell phones, computer screens, wrist watches, and for some of us, through our children. Over the past year I’ve been engrossed with the outside world through the march of time, with Julia and I leaving our old Pre K school and entering the next one, a K-12th grade institution for the long haul, with monitoring the election, the debates, and then mourning the aftermath.

The last post I wrote back in last Spring, the one I never posted here, regarded Julia’s view of transgendered folks along and the anti-transgendered laws in North Carolina, a funny story that happened to us having brunch. When it came together back in March or April of 2016, the essay seemed funny and wise. In the next moment, within a few days, as the political rhetoric rose, and the insults piled up, my post seemed quaint considering what was at stake in the world. Now with the transfer of power,  America has bigger issues to weather than what facilities people are permitted to publicly pee in.

So I’ve spent months away from the interior world of my blog. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed sharing some of the crazy things that Julia has seeded into the world. I  regretted not writing about my new mommy gaffs at our new school. But the competition was so stiff, my blog fell off.

But it does not mean I haven’t been hard at work on other projects. I’ve had two essays accepted into notable literary journals, as well as a piece published in an anthology that centers on writers views of psychotherapy: https://www.amazon.com/How-Does-That-Make-Feel/dp/1580056245

Still my blog stayed dark.

It’s happened before. During the summer months when I spend more time shuttling Julia from camp to camp, I stop. Then reawakened in September when the school bells start up. But this September new worries had nudged in, set down big stakes.

Words seemed to matter so much more. But they weren’t words I’d crafted. But certainly they mattered. And the truth, well like my blog, that’s taken a hit, too.

I thought about that after the election, as we headed to the holidays, especially while watching the Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. I love the film so much I own a copy of the DVD. But I didn’t have a chance to see it at home, way too much to do, in way to short a timeline. So when a work friend announced they’d booked a large conference room to gather a group for a Friday potluck lunch to watch this gem, I was honored to join them.

I know the film so well, I could act it out with hand puppets. But this year as I watched George Bailey’s life unfold for him with a new view. And it I received one too.

Deep down, after the election, I feared that I might have made a huge mistake. I brought my daughter to from Africa to America. To a new land. Now I feared for what this country could become, for how it would treat a brown skin girl, especially one that could be considered an immigrant. My greatest prayer has always been to live long enough to raise my daughter into womanhood. But what kind of America would comprise her world? One that disenfranchised her American dream?

But that afternoon, I sat in the cave of the conference room, silvery gray images flashing on the screen, along side 20 or 25 or so other people gathered around the long wooden conference room table, I saw my life, anew. George Bailey had just fished Clarence the Angel out of the icy water, saving himself. But he just didn’t know it yet. And as Clarence peeled back the layers of George’s life, showing him the value that could not be seen under the weight of his responsibilities or the pressures  of outside forces working against George, he realized, on the bridge, in his tears, that no matter what he faced, it is a wonderful life. And in that momment  I found that I, too, remembered the same.

I turned my face towards the white wall, hiding my tears from my co-workers, supressing sobs. I realized that no matter who sits in the White House, Julia and I have a wonderful life. A good life. One made of a family of two,  with Lego’s and a My Little Pony and Cheerios, seeding the living room carpet, a bathroom sink that greets my some of my mornings with a line up of her freshly shampooed dolls, the shocking joy of listening to her read a sign or a book, featuring words I wasn’t aware that she knew; Julia’s extraordinary sense of humor. Yes. Right in the here and now, It is a Wonderful Life.

*

Twenty or so years ago, after the sudden death of the man I loved from pneumonia at the age of 26, when I returned to work after dark mourning, someone pressed the above Op-Ed piece from The New York Times into my hands.

The original, writen to mark the New Year, has fallen apart, But this aged photocopy holds a place of honor in my office. On Friday morning I realized the clipping cast a new relevance. We have 342 days left to 2017. All of them blank pages. And the essay so wonderfully points out, “there’s no way to know what will appear on them eventually. No way at all.”

“May you live in interesting times,” the English translation of a purported Chinese quote goes. As it’s often been noted, one can never tell if it’s a blessing or a curse. Let’s see together.