On a crumbling, narrow road, twenty-three houses sit on either side of a gravel-ditched apron. My home is one of the few remaining cottages built on this private road in the 1940s for the wealthy folks to escape the city to the north suburbs. The road, its houses that line it, and its occupants inside those homes are not like what they once were.

Outside, the sky is light platinum, and the earth, brown and dormant, and the street is wet made by the misting of falling light snow. The mood, seen wide through the front room’s picture window, makes me think of times long past. On this January morning, the first month of a new year, I still have “Auld Lang Syne” looping in my thoughts, remembering times long past. Searching for a note of optimism despite my lingering song of gloom, I find it in the words of Robert Frost:

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”

The new year begs for letting go of the memories made during the past and looks ahead to the new future. It’s a time when one foot remains planted in the previous year and the other seeks steady ground in the new day. As I find balance, I have a heightened awareness of being nudged out of the comfort space of 2023, and intrigued about the unknown that awaits in 2024.

Transition versus change

I wondered about transition . . .  and change, as they are not the same. “Change” is the event, such as moving from one year to the next. I think of how change makes us feel uneasy. We want things to stay the same, yet sometimes want the monotony of it to change. We fight for what things should be yet want something new.

Heraclitus, a Pre-Socratic philosopher, claimed the phrase, Panta Rhei (”life is flux”). He recognized the essence of life as change. Nothing in life is permanent, it can’t be, because the very nature of existence is change. In his view, change is life itself.

And then there’s the “transition.” That’s the process that affects us physically, emotionally, and psychologically with some transformation that happens. We transition from living life as a single person to one where we have a partnered life, for example.

There was a time when the homeowner’s association (it no longer exists now) of my road regularly brought neighbors together. We met in a neighbor’s home where the kids would pop in and out of living rooms, and our discussions, or the dog would plop in the middle of our circle as we snacked on Cheddar cheese and Ritz crackers, sipped Chianti, and talked about maintaining our road. We co-mingled the business talk with the social chats of catching up with friends. There were neighborly acts of kindness where loose dogs were corralled back to their fenced-in yards and wayward kids back to their homes. Depending on the season, kids in the neighborhood would knock on your door with either a leaf rake or snow shovel in hand, volunteering to help while looking to earn money.

The houses plotted on the street of twenty-three have changed from small cottages nestled on big lots to larger homes spilling onto their lot’s boundaries. Those aging families have moved out and have been replaced by young couples growing their families. And the once often remarked road as a “little country lane” by a long-standing neighbor who doesn’t want a thing about it to change despite its failed condition, is neither much of a road nor a lane.

Calling where I live now in a neighborhood may feel misguided. After all, a neighborhood is about interaction and community. Though there isn’t much of that now, being in the presence of others in a neighborhood is not to be short-changed. Despite the many changes over the twenty-five years of living here, my sense of place and belonging has transformed to a sturdier footing. My “remember when’s” is a foundation, a place of balance, though I might have to say, “back then . . .” as a caveat when talking with my new neighbor.

And now, in 2024, with both feet planted on the start line of a new year, I will remember the words of a philosopher that change is life itself, and words from a poet that it goes on, even in my own neighborhood.

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.” –Virginia Woolf.

To all readers of this blog, thank you for checking in monthly to read these posts. I am appreciative of your support. Happy New Year to you!