The Year

January is like the Monday of the year. The year’s weekend holidays are over, and it’s kind of a bummer, but you’re relaxed and energetic and ready to get back to work. For a while. But the weather is gloomy, new annual reports need to be filed, New Year’s resolutions and goals need to be made, numbers need to be crunched. And the early months’ saturated Mondayness make the weeks drag on and on and on until you find yourself thinking “If I can just make it past February, I can survive.”

Finally the drippy Tuesday of the year begins. It’s a lot better than Monday, of course. The goals are made and many of them forgotten; the spring weather is starting to melt the snow. Since you’ve made your big push since the holidays, the future looks as bright as the sun on the glistening silver world. But the year’s work is still just beginning. There are meetings to go to and errands to run, and the yearend is still more of a memory than an anticipation.

The Wednesday of the year—more or less late April to early June—seems to come pretty fast. Despite the long drag through the winter, summer seems to have pierced through the fog of time headlong and met you halfway. It’s Hump Day, and you’re halfway through the year on a roll. These are the months and weeks when you marvel at time, and how fast summer has come once again, how you can remember last summer’s music hits as if they came out last week. One-half of the year down, and one-half to go!

Thursdays are great. You’re past all the dreary parts of the week slash year, and you have a lot to look forward to. This is when you loosen your tie and replace goals for work results with plans for recreation. You congratulate yourself at all the work you’ve done so far, and spend quite a bit of time relaxing. You’ve made it this far, and you can make it the rest of the way.

The Friday of the year has come at last! There is still work to be done before the yearend holidays, but it seems like it isn’t as daunting or tedious as before. The big, crystalline obstacles that seemed unsurpassable on Monday have thawed, and the spring in your step lets you soar over them and see vistas of color on the horizon. Even the leaves change color in festive anticipation. The muggy weather is replaced by cool, crisp breezes. There’s no energy for homework now. What you need is some revitalization!

At last, the yearend has come—the Saturday of the year! This is a time of parties and celebrating traditions. You dress up in a costume just for fun; special foods designed for this time of the year are plentiful; you let loose on your diet goals and enjoy extra sweets. Relatives and friends come over to visit, and you only do enough homework to keep your guilt and procrastination in check. This is the time of the year you look forward to, and the time that makes the most memories.

The year’s Sunday arrives, and the party of yestermonth has calmed down somewhat. It is now the time of year for relaxation, TV, religious contemplation, and football. You think of how many things you have to be grateful for, and to celebrate you eat as much as possible. You watch the falling snow as the year’s eyelids flutter and begin to close. You go to church and learn about Him who created the seasons and who made the earth spin in the first place. Your family surrounds you. Gentle songs that bring memories of past Sundays play on the radio.

A few pounds heavier, you yawn and savor the moment. The year has ended, just like it always has. You think of all the times you have stayed up till midnight to scream “Happy New Year!” and bang on pots and pans. Those times seem to be lined up all in a row, and yet vastly different from one another. You were a different person in each of those memories, just as now you are more different still. Tomorrow is yet another year. Soon the pure white snow will be too dirty, too icy, and too cold. But right now, napping in the warm glow of a Christmas hearth, none of that matters.