...each of us must come and go in its telling.

It's a new year. Yadda yadda yadda. It's been posted all over facebook and the news and.... everywhere. We put a lot of emphasis of these things. But why? A new beginning? That can't be it, a new year only means a new semester when you're in school and for the working person it means a new month and maybe a day off work. Yet, we watch the ball drop at midnight and we make toasts and new year resolutions.

Growing up, we always celebrated Christmas with Dad's side of the family on New Year's Eve and Day. And this year we were finally able to reinvent that tradition because for the first time in a long time all of my cousins were in the same place at the same time.

All I could think about while I was sitting there visiting with my cousins was, "I don't really know them any more." And with that realization came a deep sadness. I want to know my family as well as I know my friends. I want to know them as well as I know the characters in my books: those that I write and those that I read. There are pieces of them that I know very well: Charles loves potatoes, Kaitlin loves bread and eats her pie middle first, Kristina likes to smoke after she eats but denies herself that pleasure when with the family. (And then there's my brother who I know better than I know myself somedays.)

My cousins come and go, in and out of my life in cycles. And yet, even though I only see some of them two or three times a month, see some of them once or twice a year,  and some of them once every couple years we are still connected and there are still things that we can find to talk about.

That's one thing that families have that friends don't. If you go extended periods of time without talking to your friends it's going to be hard to pick up the threads. With family, it's natural.

I'm am glad to say goodbye to 2010. There was much hurt. As my dad said, "I think 2011 will be a lot like 2010." So it is with trepidation that I welcomed 2011. I am eager to continue my school work, but I am fearful for my heart.

I have made some choices that cannot be unmade.

Some days I wish I could go back to when my time was not so decidedly claimed by studying.

Still, I welcome 2011, with no false assumptions that I will be able to uphold any resolutions. I will come and go, just like my cousins. I will write, and I will not. I will love, and I will not. I will continue on.

"How do you pick up the pieces of an old life? How do you go on... when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are somethings that time cannot mend... some hurts that go too deep... that have taken hold." [Frodo Baggins]