I like to start every new year with a resolution or two, chosen from my list – unwritten, but still a list – of things I really want to do, but keep not getting around to. Not things I should do but avoid, like exercise, or giving up snacks. There are so many happy, satisfying things that need doing and can be turned to instead. For instance, I’ve gotten behind on my favorite, persistently arriving magazine, because I haven’t been traveling. Magazines are perfect for places where your attention is frequently interrupted – airports and airplanes, for example – because they consist of discrete parts. You can finish a whole article while waiting for your flight to be called, and not lose the thread as will happen with a book. You can dip in and out of the letters, poems, and cartoons in between the good views out your window seat. I’m quite content not to be traveling these days, but I miss reading my New Yorkers. So that’s one possibility.

Then there’s my indoor gardening. I brought my curry leaf plant in for the winter so it wouldn’t die, and it didn’t die. It has such an abundance of wonderful, fragrant curry leaves that I really want to cut some and dry them, for future use. Would they make a nice tea? I don’t especially like to cook, but I do like to play with my plants.

My spider plants could also use some attention. Their adorable enthusiasm for life leads them to throw out new, spindly limbs in all directions, each one flourishing a baby spider plant at the end. I’ve gathered these into plant supports over Mamaplant’s head so they don’t sprawl all over their neighbors, but every so often I cut them off, pot them up, and resettle them on other windowsills, sometimes in other people’s houses. It satisfies my urge to grow and propagate things, despite the snow you see on the other side of that window. So, more possibilities.

Then there’s all this yarn I’ve collected in what Kaffe Fassett calls a colorway. Whatever else I’m doing I like my hands to be busy, so knitting or crocheting is another pleasure. Frassy has a new habit – pawing a hank or ball of yarn out of its nest and carrying it around the house in her mouth, kitten-like. She doesn’t unwind or chase them, and I really don’t know if they are substituting for kittens or dead mice. But it gives me the added motivation of using the yarn while I can still find it. Also good to finish any scarves or sweaters before I run out of winter. 

While I was saving yarn from Frassy, I came across not one but two little notebooks full of notes, bits, and pieces for poems. Between these and the many poems always in my head, it would be quite satisfying to convert some of these scraps into poems. Another possibility. I will choose one or two of these possibilities for my resolution this year, but can’t tell you which. New Year’s resolutions are like wishes on a star: I was taught that if you told anyone about them, they wouldn’t come true. It’s like why you say “break a leg” to a ballerina before she goes onstage, as though some malevolent force is listening in, ready to thwart your hopes. Wish her well and she’s doomed; wish her ill, and it’s certain not to happen. So, break a leg, one and all. Let’s see if we can nudge malevolent forces in the desired direction for 2026.