Finally catching my breath in the new year. Can I still say it or is it just too yesterday? – well whatever – I wish it for you. A Good Year.
Jeez, what a relief that the ‘holidays’ are over & we can settle into whatever 2015 has to offer. Which is already a mixed bag…as usual. I’m glad it’s still (technically) winter. How about this year we do away with ‘the holidays’ & just celebrate seasons brought on by earth’s tilting…?? These would be good – & enough – celebrations for me.
Speaking of celebrations: a (very-)belated birthday one, nearly two days with four women I’ve known nearly 40 years – deep Health Collective bonds. &, the day prior, an hour or so w my oldest female friend of 50 years. Sustaining. Honoring the contributions & the stress of aging (& in some cases, alpha) female primates. Our families & our work. The pain & the perseverance. Yeah. Thankful for these sisters, & for others too, bound as we are by birth, bounty & bravery.
Friendships take work. Attention. At some point this comes as a surprise – or it did for me anyway. We figure out early (most of us) that marriage & family & work consume a lot of effort, but for some reason I’d assumed that friends are friends – you can count on them to be there whenever you need ’em. Not. Necessarily. But hey, why should friendships be different than anything else in life? Energy in, energy out. Like our primate cousins, we need to pay attention to grooming. Sadly, I’ve done my share of neglecting this worthy brand of social glue.
Did I groom enough over the past few days? I wanted to. I hope so. Human primate grooming isn’t as straight forward as the bonobo/chimp variety. It’s more words & less touch. Stories & conversation. Soup. Flowers. It’s the way we are, it seems. Some of us are better at it than others. & we ponder & deconstruct it afterwards…too much I suppose. So we can be better at it next time.
It’s the (um, probably primarily female) human primate way. Love you, Gals!
the everyday primate 
I loved sharing verbal grooming with you, my dear friend. Thanks for putting the energy in and keeping our tribe together.
A bright new year to you, Linda! May your days be filled with peace, joy, contentment, family, friends and as much of the natural world left to us primates — not much, but discerning eyes can still delight some in the aftermath of development and misuse and abuse of Ma Nature :O]
We don’t “feel relief” that the holidays are “over,” because we don’t partake in all of the consumption that seems to be required in order for the civilized world to celebrate them. Thus, on Christmas morning we awoke and greeted the day (like Pooh and Piglet, each day is our “favorite” day) without any thought to what was under the tree. We had no tree. We bought no gifts. We have so much stuff after a lifetime that we need no more. Our families know this about us and so gift-giving is a phone call or a card (handmade or hand-written). I do place traditional holiday decorations about the living room, each treasure a memory of childhood and holidays of a simpler time. We left Santa Cruz on the 30th, traveled 50 miles, to eschew New Year’s Eve where people celebrate by blowing up the sky and terrorizing wildlife (and domestic critters). We were settled in comfy-cozy in a 1930s cottage in Carmel near the Carmel River…and snoozed into the New Year in silence. Ahhhhh.
Primate! Primp!