Resolving to Resolve

                                    Gary Waters

Without a firm plan we are blown around like autumn leaves. Six years ago, or was it seven, my brother-in-law suffered a bike accident that put him in a coma, then rehab, then years of therapy. To help with his recovery from a traumatic brain injury, my husband and I moved to Maine from Washington, D.C., where I had lived for 30 years. And I only moved there because I married a guy, who I later divorced, who was in law school there.

While I like Maine -- no crime, no traffic, no crowds, no blaring sirens -- I wonder where I would be today if Neil had not fallen off his bike out on Route 1 that August afternoon. It's odd that, having been born in Brooklyn because that's where my parents lived, who lived there because that's where their parents lived, I now spend a lot of energy trying to suppress my native New-Yorkiness in order to get anyone to speak to me at all, like our local postmistress, a pasty potato dumpling of a woman with a Maine accent so thick you could cut it with a clam knife.

Thus, with the new year approaching and with all my resolutions used up over the course of my lifetime--I already gave up smoking, lost weight, eat well and give to charity -- the only thing left to do is to make a plan. Take the bull by the horns, chart a course, steer my own ship, blah, blah, blah. You get the idea. I've got five days to come up with one, and so far I've got nothing beyond we're out of cat food so I am definitely going to the market before noon.