As December brings this year to its inevitable end, I’ve been contemplating how I might improve my life in 2021.  I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s Resolutions because mine seem to disappear moments after I make them.

In light of that, I consider instead my core values – those issues I will not compromise.  My basic core belief is that we are here to help each other in whatever way we can.

A few days ago my youngest daughter and her husband visited our home with their three dogs.  The large dog, Brady, likes to lie on the sofa in our family room.

After they left, another family member observed, “I’m surprised you let Brady lie on the sofa.  We never let our dogs do that.”

I understand her surprise.

One of my strongest childhood memories is of the constant fight I had with my dad about taking care of my cocker spaniel. The dog liked to pee all over our dining room carpet.  One day my dog disappeared.

“I gave her to another family,” my dad said.  Since the dog reappeared two days later, hungry and unkempt, I suspect that Dad just dropped her off on the street a few miles away.  The second time my dad “gave her to another family” she didn’t return.  He probably just drove a little further.  Despite feeling sad, I must admit, some part of me was relieved that my father and I would no longer fight over the dog.

I have not owned a dog during my entire adult life.  I resisted the heartfelt pleas of my children, all of whom now own dogs as adults.  To me the pleasure of owning a dog (or three) is simply not worth the effort of taking care of them.  To be clear, there are many dogs I like – as long as I don’t have to feed them, walk them, or take them to the vet after they have encountered a skunk.

But I have no core value that insists a dog can’t rest on my sofa.  While that’s not my first choice, my higher value is to welcome family and friends when they visit, and that includes their dogs.

In 2021 I plan to continue to “go along to get along.”  It works for me, and I’ve had a wonderful year with those I love.  We’ve supported each other through the pandemic, with very little friction.

When I pick my battles I don’t have many.

I wish you a Happy New Year.

Love,

Alan

Every day, when I’m working at my office, I take a break to walk around the block.  I enjoy the exercise, as well as the opportunity to discover more about the neighborhood I’ve worked in for over fifteen years.

On my walk a few months ago I noticed a small tomato plant growing from a crack in the sidewalk.  A few weeks later a single cherry tomato popped out.  Every day after that I looked forward to seeing the small green fruit grow and ripen to red.

I didn’t intend to pick it.  I simply valued its being there until the day I walked by and the cherry tomato was gone – along with the entire plant.  Maybe someone else was taking a walk around the block and found the plant to be out of place.  After all, tomatoes belong in farms and gardens, and should not grow through a crack in the sidewalk of a commercial street, should they?

What do we call a plant that is out of its rightful place?  That’s right, we call it a “weed.”  In the words of Emerson, a weed is “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” And what do we do with weeds?  We pull them up and throw them away.

Of course, one person’s discovered treasure may invoke another person’s scorn.  Whenever I walk the neighborhood, I pick up plastic cups, used surgical masks, and paper bags with remnants of fast food, and put them into a trash container.  At one time those objects were useful.  Discarded on the street they became trash, first cousin to a weed.

I’ve thought about the single, out of place, cherry tomato for three months now.  I realize that the days are cold, and the tomato plant would have met its inevitable fate even if it had not been prematurely plucked from its place in the world.

My real question is this:

Am I a cherry tomato, appreciated wherever I may be, or am I a weed, my virtues undiscovered in this world of humans passing by?

Alan

The oft quoted phrase, “You Can’t Go Home Again,” is the title of a novel written by Thomas Wolfe and published in 1940, after his death.  In his book the author elaborates, “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”  (The ellipses are in the original.)

Yesterday evening I thought about this phrase as the four members of our present household (my wife, daughter, grandson, and me) sat in our family room, each eating our own separately prepared dinner.

When I was young my mother spent several hours each afternoon talking to me while cooking dinner for our family of four (Mom, Dad, my brother, and me), which, by Dad’s decree, always began at 5:30 pm.  I’ve missed the warmth of those family dinners for many, many years.

Now, after almost ten months of COVID-19 rampaging through the land, most everyone I know wants to go home again.  By that I mean that we all want to go back to “normal.”

Yet Thomas Wolfe was right.  We can never go back to the 1950’s, being young (or younger) again, or even to the comparative safety of the Thanksgiving and Christmas we knew in 2019, which now seems like a distant shore.

But home is more than a physical place or memory.  As Pliny the Elder wrote 2,000 years ago, “Home is where the heart is.”  It is where we feel, or should feel, safe.  In my life I’ve lived in eight homes, all in Los Angeles, each with its share of love, warmth, and memories.

I can’t go back to my family of origin, because I’m the only one of the four of us who now survives.  I can’t go back to the house I grew up in because it has changed, as have I.  Years ago my father and I returned to the location of the home in New York where he grew up.  We found it replaced by a large beer manufacturing plant that covered the entire block.

My father masked his disappointment with anger.  “I never want to come back here again,” he said.

Even if we can’t go back again, we can go forward.  In fulfilling our lives each day we can return our hearts to a place where we feel safe, a home we continually create and recreate, with and for those we love.

Will next year be different than 2020?  Of course.

But we can and will still be at home on this Earth we love.

Alan