Monday, Dec. 25, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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I wish I had what we all need right now: a feel-good holiday story to tell.
Like the year, when barely coming out of the pandemic, I lost my daughter’s new kitty, Pumpkinella — aka, Punky — then, after the 11th day on the lam, she finally made her way back home, saving the holiday season.
Like last year, when I traveled, injured, after chasing a lizard at home, and a young, seemingly friendly wheelchair-pushing employee at Atlanta’s airport robbed me, but only of my money, not my faith in fellow humans’ goodness.
But, I end this year worn out by the battles of 2023: Wars raging — GOP-
invented culture ones in Florida, the personal hijacked and turned political, a vice spreading nationwide.
And real wars abroad that touch us deeply. The carnage in the killing fields of Ukraine, Israel and Gaza.
The unimaginable suffering of innocents and tens of thousands displaced who knows for how long. It is haunting, as is the rampant antisemitism and Islamophobia the Middle East conflict has exacerbated in America’s not-so-united states.
I could go on listing frustrations: The lives of gay and transgender children and parents upended by homophobic grown-ups elected to public office. Immigrants vilified by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ draconian new laws, designed to fuel the fascist platform of an ambitious presidential run and party off-the-rails.
It’s all too much.
I spent the year wanting, on and off, to quit analyzing the debris.
It takes courage to show up, and my reservoir ran low against the constant pounding of evil.
The paralyzing thought that my words could mitigate or add fuel to the flames, heal or hurt someone, made writing every single one a chore.
But I wasn’t alone in feeling helpless.
“I’m not scared for myself,” one of my best friends, a lawyer, said. “I’ve lived a good life and will survive the times. But I’m scared that my daughter won’t have access to a safe abortion and I’m scared that my gay son may be attacked.”
For the first time in his life, he participated in a march, organized by a church and a bookstore, against Florida’s growing book bans. That’s good news. People aren’t sitting on the sidelines anymore. They’re showing up at school board meetings to counter Proud Boy hate. They’re thirsty and voting for better leadership.
Maybe I do have, if not a good, then a feel-better story to tell.
In reviewing my 2023 notebooks, I find more threads of hope than dread:
The message to students from Miami-Dade County’s Teacher of the Year feels more powerful than ideologues’ book and play banning: “Whatever you’re going through, it’ll be alright.” I annotated her words: “Boy, did I need to hear that.”
As in previous years, I lost people to death, politics and heartbreak. But instead of breaking me, the process of navigating loss renewed me. Cultivating a stronger self, physically and mentally, became daily practice, even if the mindfulness workbook only has one entry.
Developing a strong core, it turns out, helps one survive the blows, especially when they come from one’s own tribe. Or, when people granted the gift of trust turn into strangers in a stunning moment of revelation.
I drank less coffee and more Yogi tea, which came with words of ancient wisdom.
“Without darkness, you would never know the light.”
“Never regret your mistakes. Admire the courage it took to attempt the unknown.”
I expanded my garden, front and back — and fed the butterflies.
They flutter around me during warm mornings, unbothered by my presence, and allow me to observe their nighttime ritual, so like us, as they gather, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, until they find the perfect spot and comfortable way to cluster on the branches of my Tree of Gold.
Watching them is my soft takeoff and landing in the cycle of a day.
And I think it’s lovely, this life of mine.
Gratitude rescues.
So does reading someone of the intellectual caliber of Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore. Her books are a treasure trove of insight. They take one to myriad places in time and geography, delivering with balance and empathy a panoramic view of today within the context of our yesterdays.
“The past has a hold: Writing is the casting of a line over the edge of time. But there are no certainties in history. There are only struggles for justice, and wars interrupted by peace,” she writes in the essay “The Rule of History” in her new collection, “The Deadline.”
Sitting in a director’s chair in conversation with this luminary, in a room at Books & Books packed with readers who are kindred spirits, was a highlight of my year.
So was flying across the country several times — then, coming home.
On my flight home from Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania, which lays claim to the real first meal of American pilgrims, almost everyone around me flew with their window shades closed.
This preference for a hermetic journey seems to have become a trend. I don’t understand the refusal to see the wonders of the heavens unfolding. It’s free and inflation-proof.
What a show travelers missed during this afternoon arrival as the orange sun gloriously set over Florida.
My unsolicited advice for New Year 2024: Open the window and see — with eyes and heart — how beautiful this world could be ... if only.
Fabiola Santiago is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
