Now into the 8,760^th – and final – hour of 2018, I find myself bewilderingly content.  The house is warm and soft, lit only by Christmas lights; Vivaldi’s “Gloria” plays on the stereo; I’m sipping a fine 16-year-old Scotch; the bay is glassy still under a windless sky; my oldest girl cat, Jenny, sleeps in my lap (I press my face into her coat and am calmed by her soft roar), while her seven adopted brothers and sisters doze nearby – their peace comforts me.

I’ve spent much of the evening preparing the New Year feast – sorting black-eye peas, dicing cabbage and corned beef, mixing cornbread ingredients – and finishing the eccentric tasks that I perform each year-end.  Most of all, my thoughts scan back over the year, searching for moments when I spoke and behaved honorably and kindly.  I remember a few such moments, and from them I take hope.

But many more are the moments when I spoke angrily without cause, or acted peevishly with little reason.  When, despite comforts and blessings far beyond anything I have deserved, I was ornery and thoughtless; when I could have spoken a kind word but did not; when I could have thought of others before myself, but did not; when a cold midwinter wind chilled my spirit.

Regrets wash over me like a long summer shower.  And I am glad for each of them.  I reject the pop-psychology proposal of having no regrets.   Regrets straighten us; if we attend to them, we may yet be better.

And that is all I hope for the year that just this minute began: that I am better.  That come this night a year from now, I will scan the closing year and find that I was, in the balance, a bit more kind and thoughtful – a far cry from all I should be, but nearer than before.

Blessings on you, my friends, in the year ahead.