Hindsight’s inevitable at a year’s conclusion. Yes, dates are superimposed, arbitrary – nothing much changes when the year turns: it’s not like sunset or the moon’s menstrual movements, which all nature notes. Yet for humans, the clock’s tick shocks. Twenty twenty-four?! For one born in Fifty-one – Nineteen fifty-one – what do those digits indicate, portend?

            Naturally we resolve – to rectify, improve.

Can’t we make more of our time? Do better? Be better? Puppy Henry – no longer a pup, really – eight months! – limber, feisty, and mighty with the energy of adolescence – looks on curiously. Improvement is not in his repertoire. He’s digested his past as he has his food: its lessons are incorporate, inseparable, beyond consideration. Tomorrow has never been his concern: it will be what it will be. No thresholds for Henry – before, after, wonder or regret at the tireless industry of time – only now.

            You and I may blink with astonishment. A year ago, Jane and I were living in Rome most of the year, planning to stay at least till our lease’s end two years hence, mapping what to make of our European time. Then our amiable landlords apologetically reclaimed their premises. No worries, we’d find another place. But then, untethered, our beautiful growing grandchildren reasserted their voiceless yet incessant claim. They would not have us long or we them. Time to go home.

            Home startled. House and friends greeted us warmly, woods and trails remained their exquisite selves. The war in Ukraine continued but for America no obvious crisis forebode. Yet our national mood was rancorous, wrangling, rancid, reminiscent of a broken marriage in its final throes. We’d observed the unraveling from afar, but now it was we whose spirits were being picked apart by spite.

            But we were home – Hallelujah! Then, mid-July, in a freakish parking lot accident, Jane tripped and broke both her arms as she fell. Badly. Emergency medicine, surgery, and therapy set her on the road to recovery, but the road was long, hard, slow. A few days before her fall, Jane and I had welcomed home our irresistible two-month-old cockapoo, whom you have met, who now goads me for accreditation as co-author of these missives (they grow so fast!). With two helpless arms and a hilarious helter-skelter pup, our lives turned inward.

            (This is my first mention here of Jane’s travail. Condolences are no fun when one can’t even type thanks. Her stoic, heroic recovery is my happiest holiday gift.)

            2024 will be, willy-nilly, a terrible defining year in the history of America and civilization. The issue on the ballot November Fifth is the continuation of democracy with all its flaws versus a hopeless reversion to tyranny: freedom versus subjugation: innovation and opportunity versus conformity and compliance. The causes of this seemingly unnecessary confrontation will keep sages speculating for centuries. Whatever the outcome, America is slated for years of recovery, readjustment. If Trump wins, voices like yours and mine may be stifled, an uneasy change.

            Circumstances, not preferences, dictate my New Year vows. I must arm to preserve what I prize. Not to enlist my all in this cataclysmic contest is to invite the maniac’s manacles. Anyone who thinks we have a choice in this matter isn’t paying attention.

            A peaceable, lazy soul, I dread 2024. How Rome entices with its dream of irresponsibility – so far removed, what could we do to derail our doom? Home, we must do all we can. While I hate the hurt that awaits, I rejoice not to be AWOL.

            Good luck to us all.