M.J. Rose

I have a young baby so partying ’til midnight for New Years was not exactly on the agenda. This year, to welcome 2008, I created what I hope will become a new ritual. I lay the baby down for her last sleep of 2007 (the year of her birth) and stepped into a piping hot shower. With the new scrubby sponge my sister Kate gave me for Christmas, and the earthy geranium soap I’ve been using since the Christmas before, I began to scrub. I scrubbed from the bottom up – bottoms of tired new mama feet, the flat planes of knee caps achey from bearing the added weight of a new growing human, those wrinkly pink elbows, and the milky curves of my altered torso – changed forever by the ordeal of childbirth – paper thin skin of my flushed chest, strong child wrangling shoulders. As I scrubbed the old skin of 2007 from my body, I thought about how I could better my experience of life in the coming year. I would do my best to make less negative commentary every day, I would improve my honesty in a compassionate manner, I would hope each day to find the strength to forgive those that have hurt me over the years and to open my heart to those who so desire entrance there. I would be more present each moment on earth with my beautiful new daughter and become the person in her life that she will count on for a feeling of emotional grounding – which of course means that I myself will need to work on my own ability to exist peacefully in an uncertain world – not an easy task for me or anyone. I scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed some more. I felt the heat of the water wash down my back and listened to it swish down the drain into whatever strange adventure water undergoes when it has been used in a shower. I inhaled the steam and exhaled more detritus of the past – whatever I happened to have lodged in there – and with those breaths came a blessing for everyone on earth to have a quiet moment like this, a moment to recognize how each day we are alive is a new chance to scrub ourselves a little bit more into the awake and gracious people we are meant to be.

I hope that you too will find some new rituals in 2008 – something to help you slough off the old dead baggage and open yourself up to those everyday blessings that add up to one expansive blessing called Life.

Happy 2008! May all your wishes come true.

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