Happy New Year 2009

Iris bagging some rays in the snow - we just got another couple of inches.

It's an old pic but I want to tell an old story.

This time last year me and sweetie were both in hospital with unexpected life threatening illnesses but a year later this is what I carry with me from that time.

People, some of whom I barely knew, fed and cared for my animals, cleaned my house, answered my messages, picked up my mail, did my laundry, stocked my fridge with food and when I still wasn't home a week later threw it all out and restocked it again, delivered firewood, chopped kindling, paid my bills, made the trek into Vancouver to visit me - so many kindnesses I didn't even know about at the time.
When I got home and was recuperating and sweetie was still in a coma for what would turn out to be another 6 weeks, they ferried me into Vancouver for doctor's appointments and to visit him, read to him days I couldn't get in, took him food from restaurants when he woke up, called me with visit status reports, brought me food, flowers, music, books, movies, and kept the woodstove going. Every day. For weeks. I lacked for nothing.

A woman I'd only ever spoken to twice gave me an old sweater she'd always found comforting, a friend wanted to rent me an apartment in the city so I'd have somewhere to stay in between hospital visits, surrogate daughter phoned from Wales where she was going to school to say she was coming home. (*sternly* You'll do nothing of the kind, you'll stay and finish your degree)

I returned months later to a part-time job to discover paychecks waiting for the time I hadn't worked there.

Look, I know when you do some little thing for someone you may or may not know very well that it doesn't seem like much of anything in the course of your day, but to suddenly be on the receiving end of dozens of these kindnesses on a daily basis is a remarkable gift of hope.

So on this the first day of a new year in which the macro political and economic prospects for the near future may look pretty gloomy, it helps to remember that this is still how people naturally act towards one another in their own immediate world.

Happy New Year