At first I thought the summaries bothered me because I am more comfortable looking ahead than I am looking back. Or it could be because I thought it was preposterous to try to sum up 365 days  in one column or television segment.

But then it dawned on me. The reason I didn’t want to review the last year was because it was dangerous territory.  If  I dipped my toe in the water of nostalgia, I would likely be pulled in by the tide of gratitude.  If I gave it just a little thought, if I put together the pieces of the last twelve months, I would see that I had a year overflowing with mind-blowing blessings. And I really needed to write a final paper for grad school today.

As I sat in the pew of my synagogue, mesmerized by Harrison’s d’var torah as he become a bar mitzvah, I knew it was a special year. A shy child become a bold man, looking his guests in the eye as he shook their hands, allowing himself to be body-passed over the dancing crowd, hugging me when he thanked me and Michael at the end of the night.  It was a year of watching Olivia mature, too, as she generously handed her brother the limelight,  and as she made fresh choices for healthy friendships. There was nothing like watching her ferociously face opponents on the basketball court, too.

My brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, sisters-in-law and parents astounded me with their bottomless well of love in 2009. They flew out to California for Harrison’s bar mitzvah, and filled the crowd at my book launch in Milwaukee. They called me and offered me support as I decided to leave consultancy and seek the next career move. Throughout the last year, they constantly told me words that still make me cry today: I’ve got your back.

It was a year of nieces. Sabrina moved in with us, and Stephanie spent after school hours with the kids every week. They both share their spirit, their humor, their zeal for life with our households. They  are forbidden to leave the state. I’ve offered them incentives to lure their siblings to California.

This year I finally deeply understand the transitions my mom had the courage to go through in her own life, and I credit her with my strength and stamina. She was my first one to read my manuscript, she is my first call after a victory, and the first voice of support on a bad day. She held up my book at every one of her networking meetings, boasting about her daughter and selling books, and she scheduled my book launch in Milwaukee. Forget the woman behind the man. She’s the mom behind the woman.

Hikes with girlfriends and candid conversations were the highlights of my weeks last year. I am so fortunate to have friends who showed such unbridled enthusiasm when The New Jew was published, and their support for everything I do means the world to me.

My book tour gave me the unexpected bonus of spending time with friends I had lapsed with. They opened their homes to me when I stayed in their cities, feeding me, giving me vitamins when I was getting overrun from exhaustion. I felt nurtured and loved every time I travelled, and friendships have found second lives.

A surprise romance opened my heart to love in a new stage of life, and I am so very lucky. It’s different this time around – kids, schedules, careers and life’s daily bustle make it challenging to see each other sometimes, but I’m learning to integrate, and it is lovely.

It was a year with death. My brother-in-law Marshall passed away.  I miss him very much. I don’t think I’ll ever see a smile like his again. I was stunned by the death of my friend Robert, a friend of mine from Larchmont Temple. When I was last there he took a photo of me that I loved so much, I use it on my Facebook author page. They, and others, are gone. But they are not forgotten.

It is confirmed – I cannot possibly summarize an entire year in an essay. For every sentence of gratitude I begin, ten more pop into my mind. How can I recall each pomegranate colored sunset over my deck, the cat’s smug expression from the sofa, the raucous games of Pictionary, the sound of the branches brushing my window, the taste of the best smoothie ever, the feel of my daughter’s hand in mine?

I have just one New Year’s resolution: to give back even half as much as I received last year.

Happy New Year.

I am back from my Chicago trip. It was one of those experiences where I was so many places at once – in my head, anyhow. Eckhart Tolle would not have been impressed.

There were many triggers to my past, starting with the air. The atmosphere in the Midwest is different from the air in California – particularly the crisp, autumn air that welcomed me every day in Chicago. One step outside the door and I was transported to the mounds of fall leaves my siblings and I used to take a half-hour to pile high, only to destroy them with jumps, stomps, and raucous throws.

Staying with my friends, Adam and Joyce, and their 18-month old brought me back to my days as a young mother, nurturing toddlers. The sentimental side of me idealized the loveliness of living life with a little one, their little hands grasping mine, their random running through the house like surly cats. Yet, watching Adam work late into the night after his baby was asleep reminded me of the challenges on the schedule, too.

I have to admit, I fed the reliving of my layers in life. I drove through Evanston, where I had lived one college summer, retracing my steps to the bus stop, to the cafe, to my workplace. How could it be that 22 years have passed since then? And how could I have possibly known at that one day I would return to that same neighborhood as a Californian, part New Yorker, a Jewish woman, an author, and single mom? I never would have believed it.

On my last day, I met my first boyfriend for lunch. MG and I dated in college, but hadn’t seen each other or spoken in the last 26 years. Oddly, we talked as if we had just spoken yesterday. Seeing him, being in the presence of his kindness, humor and generosity, gave me such strength. If I had had such amazing judgment at the age of 18 to pick him for a boyfriend, I guess I could certainly trust the decisions I made in my life today.

And then there was the present. I attended Adam and Joyce’s synagogue, Aitz Hayim. There is so much that moved me about this service, it will have to be a post on its own. Suffice it to say that it holds true to its claim that it is a “different kind of synagogue.” I’m still smiling from the spirit, and reeling from the teachings.

With all of the tumult of the past and present swirling about me, the future still sung out in the wind. I loved speaking at the shul, just as I loved stepping in the Chicago Tribune Tower for my WGN interview. Reading the etchings on the walls in the stunning art deco lobby, quoting the merits of writing and journalism, I felt chills. I had finally answered my pull to writing, something I had felt since elementary school. And now, I was continuing my journey into the media. I was finally headed exactly where I wanted to go.

I hadn’t  wanted to travel without my kids. But they were with me everywhere, just as my past and future were, too.  It seems no matter where we go, we’re facing in many directions.

But today the branches were mere silhouettes, and the city, the view from my windows, was concealed behind a milky white sky.

Recently a friend asked me if I liked the fog. ”Like it?” I answered. “I love it!” It brings me back to my suburban childhood in Milwaukee, where fog was a rare experience. I remember looking out my window to see our quiet street to see it blanketed in gray. I stepped out the door and walked down the street, arms straight out from my side, calling back to my sister, “I’m in a cloud! I’m walking in a cloud!” It was as if the heavens had descended on us for a visit.

There is something to be said for living with one’s head in the clouds. When I look out into the fog, I cannot see too far ahead. Sometimes I can barely see the car in front of me, or the house next door, and the long-distance range is certainly out of reach. It makes me live right here, right now, in the immediate. The fog is magical and mystical, and it creates a border for my surroundings. I appreciate the outline of the fence on mornings like these. The trees are framed. And the world is still. All of the extraneous doesn’t seem to matter when, instead of seeing the vastness of the world, I notice pellets of moisture floating in front of me.

It is mid-morning now. Typically the sun would have broken through already, but not today. I’ve decided to go with it. I’m going to leave my grocery list and office tasks and bills behind and take a drive to the country. I’m going to saddle up a horse and go for a long ride. By the time I’m driving home the sun will have pierced the sky and time will have moved forward. But, until then, it seems like the perfect day to live in the clouds.

Take tonight, for instance. I am alone in my room, two twin beds divided by a low bureau, a desk on either side of the beds. I am stretched out in my sweats, my laptop on my legs, books strewn all about me. I am working on a final paper for grad school. When I was an undergrad, I would have been sitting at my desk, clacking away on typewriter keys, but the scene is otherwise identical to my undergrad days.

Shockingly, so are my thought processes.

My paper is due on Monday. I knew going into this weekend that I’d have a few precious pockets of time to finish the lengthy project. Returning from dinner, I glanced at my desk ready to start my work. Then I noticed the television. I’ll just see what’s on. One show. I sat on a bed two eighteen inches from the television (there is no other way in a dorm room) and flipped through the channels. Write the paper the adult-me scolded.

I snapped off the tv and grabbed my journal. I wanted to clear those pesky thoughts that cumulated on my six-hour drive south. A handmade card fell out., and the words Running to You,” were crooked across the heavy paper. Olivia had hand-stamped and drawn it two weeks ago, and I loved it, just as I loved coming upon it unexpectedly.

It made me miss my sweet daughter, so I called her (never mind that I had spoken to her only two hours earlier). After our brief chat, I was really ready to hunker down and get to work. I filed my nails. I ate half a cookie I packed from the Commons earlier. Then  I went to my laptop.

The paper started to come together. Sections formed themselves, and the text flowed. It was a great half-hour –until I heard a crowd of kids outside. I feel like going out, I thought to myself, shocked at my regressed response. In college, I would have talked my roommate into abandoning our studies immediately. “If we just sit here thinking that we will go out after we study, we’ll be so distracted we won’t be able to concentrate.”

“Hmmm,” she would say. “It does make sense…..”

In school I recently studied how our environment – our place – is integral to our behaviors, feelings and perspectives. I can testify to that about dorm rooms. I fully blame the worn desks and two twin beds jammed near closet doors and the scrunched living quarters for my regression. But I can’t get into it right now. I’ve got to get back to my paper– which I really do love writing.

As soon as I go to my website and enter this post.

My beloved brother-in-law, Marshall, died yesterday. He was my sister-in-law’s husband. He was everyone’s best friend. We were not shocked by the loss. He had fought an incredible battle with cancer, and more than tripled the life expectancy the doctors gave him. Yet, I can’t quite grasp that I will not see that big smile of his again. Or hear his quick wit.

The thing about Marshall (as if there were one thing) is that his smile was his baseline expression. When he entered a room, he didn’t do so in a grandiose way – he did it in a joyous way, which is why his smile seemed permanent. It was as if he was getting a perpetual kick out of life. When person who is always present, always laughing, always happy, leaves us, we are both comforted and saddened.  On one hand, I know Marshall truly had a good life. He was a loving, attentive father, husband and grandfather. He lived life fully every day, sailing, painting, reading, exercising, and running his dental practice.  Life didn’t pass him by, and that is a condolence. On the other hand, it seems that someone who lives like that, making everyone around them feel loved, should get to live even longer. We need more of Marshall. Instead, the air feels different now.

I guess I had to tell someone that I’m going to miss him taking out his ukulale at Thanksgiving, strumming a Hawaiian tune, coaxing us to sing along. I’m going to miss the way he grins as he listens to me, asking me with great interest about the little things in my life. I’ll miss him painting with my kids, and reading peacefully on the deck. I’ll miss the joyful calm he added to a room. I wonder if I could have possibly touched him even a morsel as much as he touched me.  The funeral and shiva are on Sunday. It will be good to gather with the people he loved and who loved him back, so we can honor him – and miss him – together.