new...

You always hear people say with relief that they can start with 'a clean slate' with the arrival of the New Year. What does that really mean? It's obviously relative to each individual, but I can't help think about this 'clean slate' and what it means for me.

Looking back, 2010 was a year of momentous occasions spanning both ends of the spectrum. From my engagement to my amazing fiance to my father's passing, and many - although overshadowed - events in between, 2010 will certainly be a year that I will not soon, not ever, forget despite the fact that the half of me suffering from a broken heart partly wishes I could.

One of the things that hit home for me this specific New Years is that time just keeps marching on. I know we hear it everywhere, especially the older we get, but it really does. Time has no concept of grief, happiness, boredom or any other emotion that seems to somehow feel the manipulations of time's incessant marching. I distinctly remember the day my father died, my fiance and I were sitting in the waiting room in the hospital and the Reverend from my childhood church was sitting with us and he was reminiscing about his own father's passing. "You just want to run out and tell the world to stop!" he said. There is that part of me that desperately wants that. That day was literally a day that stood still...but only for us. Time was a second thought. We must have sat in that hospital room around my father for three hours....and it still doesn't feel like it was long enough. I still feel like I didn't get to say what I wanted to.

But on the other hand of all that, I desperately want time to speed up...so that I can wake up to my wedding day, don my gorgeous wedding gown and walk down the aisle to the man - and the future - of my dreams. I'm wishing time away as I write this, looking outside seeing the bare tree branches and the snow-covered sidewalks; wishing for Spring and Summer and Fall; wishing for this moment I've envisioned for so long to come true before my eyes.

So my clean slate? I guess I'm not wishing for a clean slate. Instead I'm wishing for a time machine to take me to two different places at once but to say the exact same thing.... "I love you."