2023 has been a tough year. There's been a lot of good, but it's been a year where I've never quite felt like I've been able to catch my breath. I started the year with a dying dream, and it's ending with a dying dear friend and cousin. In the middle, I lost Dan, the massive personality that was the Rankows' patriarch. My Dad is staying with us currently, which is mostly great, despite the dementia, but three adults, a dog and a cat are a tight squeeze in 500 square feet. And in one of those 'to top it off' moments, I had to have a tooth pulled this week as it fractured beneath the gumline. Small fry in the grand scheme, but when you can't catch your breath, it doesn't take much to knock you over.
So I am hoping 2024 will be a better year. I know it's just an arbitrary turn of the calendar, but the idea of compartmentalising a whole lot of awful in a little temporal box that can never come back is appealing. I realise that as I, and my circles, age, hard times will be more and more common. But maybe 2024 will be a little bit kinder.
Tomorrow Pops, Sushil, Mary Keany, Chester and I head to Wales to spend a week in a cabin near Cardigan. I am looking forward to charm, calm and space. Other than a lunch on Saturday, nothing is booked. I'd love a little bit of the Heather Lende life, but I think it takes a whole lot more than a week in the woods to get there.
I hope that the holidays bring you peace and calm and, as much as is possible, a little bit of joy.
Shaun
Sushil and I in one of good times, above Dubrovnik.
Pops at his happiest - watching the Liverpool match in a pub.
Isn't it fabulous?
#family #love
The wisdom of Islington.
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