12/31/21
On the last day of last year – in my final hours of the hidey-hole of 2020, I drove into Louisville on my own for the day. I had never been before, but I was staying a few days in Kentucky with my childhood best friend and was needing an urban change of scenery. I remember being surprised to see that most of the city was shut down, and I drove from place to place to see if their doors were even unlocked to accommodate me. I went to a coffee shop that a friend recommended and there was no seating so I went to a different shop that the same friend recommended and I pulled out a notebook and I wrote and edited like my hands were on fire, like my heart had been engulfed in flames. I mentioned Nashville to the barista, and we talked about the place that I had left approximately five hours before that moment like a mom who gets a babysitter only to spend all her time out talking and thinking about her children. I took myself to an expensive Italian restaurant for lunch and it was empty in preparation for New Years diners and I ordered wine and indulgent pasta and I ate on my own at a table for four and when I consider it now, it was as if someone pressed the pause button on an entire city, on an entire day. A city held its breath. A day started and ended, sure, but oh so slowly.
On my way out, I stopped at a liquor store on the edge of town. I was trying to find cheap enough champagne when an older man began to speak to me and he mentioned my shoes and he mentioned the wine I was looking at and he mentioned thinking that I was nice to look at before he got in line behind me. And eventually, I got in my car and I drove to Ally and a year has passed since the day that was paused, and I can’t help but feel all sorts of things in relation to who I was then, to who I am now. To what the world was then, to what the world is now. And I wonder if I’m wired to be sentimental or if it’s a byproduct of growing older and I wonder if I’m growing wiser (because the wrinkle on my forehead assures me that time is passing). All of my reassurance, a good portion of my hope lies in the fact that time is passing – and since it is passing whether you’re aware of it or not, whether you’d like it to or not, I would encourage you to hold your breath sometimes. Press the pause button as often as you’re able. Start and end, but do it oh so slowly.
Because a year, a month, a day can handle you, and you can handle a year, a month, a day because it’s all empty and blemish-free until it isn’t and some bit of yourself, an honest bit of yourself, will hold you through today and tomorrow and each day after that. A lifetime of capability.
Lightly,
Leah
Leah Kepley, M.Ed. 