I am sitting at a table in a house on a hill somewhere on the California coast. It’s morning, it’s almost the end of 2023, and I can hear my nephew talking. He’s just a year and a half old, and he’s still in his crib. I look outside. It’s gray and it’s raining, and I look back at my journal at the blank page where I’m writing about 2023. I look outside again and I see a very tiny door. It’s one of those fairy doors that’s only about six inches tall. The door is for my nephew, whose parents hope that the door will help his budding imagination flourish.
I look at the fairy door, and I imagine a door that’s almost closed. The door is 2023, and I’m peering through its ever-narrowing crack. I’m squinting and I’m straining to hear what’s happening behind the door before it shuts for good. I see and hear the people, places and things I discovered this year.
It’s all a swirl of colors and sounds and feelings…
I see a mountain called Table Mountain, which surrounds the city of Cape Town in South Africa. Table Mountain is a magical mountain. It’s magical because it conjures clouds straight out of the air at its summit, and it casts those clouds into the sky, and when you see this happen you feel like the mountain is playing. When you hike up the mountain you see all kinds of wildflowers and plants that are like little silent symphonies of color and happiness exploding skyward.
Then I’m on a trail leading up the side of Table Mountain. I am hiking with a German traveler whose parents recently passed away. The traveler is seeing the world and writing a book that they hope will help ease the pain they feel coursing through their home country. I hear the two of us laughing and talking about what it means to live life fully.
Then the traveler swirls and vanishes like the clouds leaping into the sky, and another mountain appears in the swirl of memories behind the door. The mountain is Mont Blanc in the Alps, and I’m hiking around it with a friend. Oceans of wildflowers surround us, and the distant ringing of cow bells fills the mist. Clouds cover Mont Blanc, and I love the feeling of knowing the mountain is there even though it’s invisible. When the clouds move and I glimpse Mont Blanc, the mountain looks like a rocky, snowy planet floating above the clouds.
Mont Blanc swirls away, and I see a face. It’s raining and I see a face in the window of the bakery in Paris that I loved. The face is that of the baker’s, and they’re grinning at me because they just saw the look on my face after I took my first bite of one of their croissants. They saw me levitate with joy and they grinned, and when my feet touch the ground again I’m back in Cape Town and I’m dancing at a place called Truth. The sounds of New Orleans jazz filled my heart when I was a boy and made me move wildly, and those sounds still cast a spell on me. I do a dip and a clap and I snap my fingers, and I look at a pair of friendly eyes before there’s another flash and a swirl and there I am, in London. It’s raining and I’m on my way to see a play adapted from one of my favorite novels, The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. I walk past Harrods department store and climb down the stairs to the Knightsbridge underground station. I get on the train and I turn around and see something written on a hat: “Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”
That isn’t entirely true, because now I see a beach. It’s a giant beach, and you can see Table Mountain far away in the distance over the water, where it looks like a ship about to set sail. It’s sunny and if you look at the sand at the right angle, countless shells all flash at you like little suns, and for a moment I feel like I’m walking among stars.
One of the stars flashes and I’m now in a little farmhouse in the Cederberg mountains in South Africa, which is where farmers grow all the world’s rooibos tea. I’m harvesting rooibos with a scythe, and I’m sipping the red tea with the friends who brought me to the farmhouse. We hike through the rocky landscape and find ancient rock paintings on the walls, and I ask my friend what experts think the paintings mean. They say that there are a few ideas, and the thing they say that I like the most is that some people will spend the night in the caves with the paintings and simply pay attention to the effect the paintings have on them.
Then a wind starts blowing. It’s a strong wind, strong enough that, for a moment, I feel like I could fly into the sky as easily as a cloud jumping off of Table Mountain. The rooibos bushes blow in the wind, and as I take one last sip of a red tea that makes me feel like I’m drinking straight from the planet’s soil, the swirling cauldron of memories behind the little fairy door goes dark.
It’s quiet in the darkness, but I can sense a question floating there in the air: Is the number of things you do how you measure a year? Then an answer: There is no one way to measure a year. The best you can do is pause and just listen to your memories as though they are guests at your table. You may come away a bit surprised by what you hear; you will come away with the answer.
The fairy door clicks closed, but like Mont Blanc behind the clouds, 2023 and everything in it will always be there. The events of yesteryear will work their health into 2024 in ways you cannot yet imagine.
I am now looking at the last sunset of 2023. It was cloudy all day in California, and I did not see the sun. But there are no clouds on the horizon and the sun is there again. It’s there, there, there, there…and now it’s gone. I hear the sound of a door shutting. Sunset light frames the door, and I hear my nephew playing somewhere outside in the twilight. 