Turning The Corner

 I won't say that I don't like to complain, because I do, but I will be very pleased to put 2022 in the rearview mirror. 

This past year included the looming shutdown of the school where I have worked for my entire teaching career. This had the effect of putting an asterisk on everything that we did, no matter how hard we tried to put a brave face on things and move through the fall without giving the impression that we were all deeply affected by this top-down bureaucratic decision. To say that I was disillusioned by this "cost-cutting measure" would be a vast understatement. But it's in the right quadrant. 

And I became an orphan in 2022. At sixty. You might guess that this gave me plenty of time to reckon with the heartbreak of losing my mother. Not really. Her steadfastness and continual ability to bounce back from serial bouts of all manner of maladies left me with the impression that it would take more than a couple falls to take her out. Her passing reminded me of that old saw about no one living forever. Which bums me out incredibly because it continues to be my personal goal. This has put a slight kink in that plan. 

2022 was also a year in which the sore losers continued to dominate the headlines. I suppose the only real gift for the coming run for the 2024 presidential election is that the former gameshow host will have to divide his time between complaining about the 2020 election and the one that he hopes he can win. If he's not in jail. 

Because he's not. Still. Coming up on the second anniversary of the insurrection pointed at our nation's capitol there have been nine hundred sixty-four people charged in the mob attack. I checked the list Donald "J is for Jail" Trump's name does not appear on that roll. Which  may be only a matter of time, but since we continue to play out the string here in the year before 2023, I can't feel anything but anxious about January arriving as scheduled. 

The new year may also bring good news on the school front, as a new school board and new mayor will be taking office with previously announced intent to keep schools open. But that won't be until 2023. That's how this stuff works. Patience is a virtue and all that rot. 

January will also bring the eighteenth, which would have been my mother's eighty-eighth birthday. And the whole grief cycle will start again from the top. It will be another day on the stack of fallen calendar pages, another moment to pause and reflect on what was and what can still be. Mom used to talk a lot about "rounding a corner," so let's get on with it. 

Good riddance, 2022.