None of the cliches apply.
- This year has NOT raced by.
- I am NOT glad to see the backside of 2025.
- I am not looking forward to what 2026 has in store.
It does bring in some retrospection, always, and I confess that something happened this year that makes me look forward to old age.
It’s these odd flashes of long-delayed realization that continue to show up.
The first happened in 2023 (on the cusp of Hot Matron Summer Part I), when I realized by my mother had an excellent reason to be borderline hysterical when I tried to scope out potential boyfriends at a Marathon of The Prisoner on New Years Eve.
(To recap, I was making coffee and out of nowhere the appropriate neurons clicked and I understood my mom’s motivations about a fight from decades earlier.)
That’s happened more and more this year. [VAGUENESS AHEAD … A PRIVILEGE NOT AFFORDED TO MOM]
I’ll be doing some mundane task and my subconscious finds whatever lost puzzle piece it needs and something clicks into place.
“That had nothing to do with me, she was just promoting herself!” [five year delay]
“That man was his father-in-law, not his father!” [ten year delay]
And, twice this year, an infuriating “Oh, that man was coming on to me.” And now, that man is probably dead.
I really hope this continues in the New Year.