UBC January 2024 - Final Goodbye to 2023, Part I

The other day, in her post Saying a final goodbye to 2023, Jeanine answered some important questions that author Shannon Kaiser brought up, which aimed at letting go of 2023 and embracing the new and improved 2024, and today, I will do the same. 

Why?

Today is January 6, Three Kings Day, Epiphany, and last chance to clean up Christmas decoration. At least that's the norm here in Switzerland. I have some yeast dough that is in the process of proofing, a load of laundry in the dryer, one in the washer, so while the household is basically taking care of itself, and the teenager is still asleep, this is my time to write.

In order for it to be of chewable size, I'll divide it into two parts. Here goes part one:

The last year has felt...

Intense! Looking back at the other years though, that's not unusual. 

I work part-time, 2.5 days a week up to full time, depending on whether my coworker recovers from major surgery, is otherwise sick or on vacation. I drive my son 60km (37 miles) to and from ice hockey practice twice or three times a week plus a game on the weekends, and I basically do all of the housework. So my plate is always full. 

Last year, Colin graduated from junior high and moved on to a new school that requires commuting by train, so he's not coming home for lunch. This gives me more flexibility, but I also get to see him less. I dedicated my October UBC to the question so what is my new purpose now?

I was encouraged in a project that was already in the pipeline, namely to make myself available as a freelancer for our village magazine, which is published quarterly. Next week, the municipal council is expected to officially elect me as a permanent contributor.

What I am most proud of myself for is....

I didn't fall into a semi-empty nester depression. I'm only half joking. While I was happy for my son to move on education and self-sufficiency-wise, I was sad that I had to let go of so much I cherished. I felt let down by this mother role thing. You give birth, you raise, you parent, you feed, you encourage, and boom, they're (almost) gone! 

In all reality though my teenage boy morphed into this young man practically over night. We're having good conversations, and thanks to driving to hockey, we still get to spend some quality time, even though his school days have otherwise become considerably longer. 

The greatest lesson I learned about myself was...

Taking care of myself. In early 2023 I was sick. I don't know what it was. In retrospective it may have been Covid? Either way, it left me drained of energy. Taking laundry down to the basement and coming back up to the upper floor of the house felt like mountain climbing. I had to take a break on the ground floor. Very humbling. In November I had a bad fall that made me see a doctor, and in this context, I had all my blood work done. 

Boom, cholesterol and glucose levels high, blood pressure high. Another thing high, it's called MCV, mean corpuscular volume. It measures the average size of one's red blood cells. It's usually an indicator for vitamin B12 or folate deficiency, but these results were fine. So she referred me to a specialist, whom I am going to see mid-January. I did some googling, but it left me scared, so I'm going to tell myself my MCV is just elevated, not high. According to Swiss cutoffs MCV is supposed to be between 80 and 97 femtoliter, and in the U.S. they are more generous and determine the range to be from 80 to 100 fl, which puts my 99.5 in the category of just passed.

The person who taught me the most is...

My Grandma. She passed away in 2019, just a few months shy of turning 100 years old. So the learnings go back further than 2023. 

She was born in Germany, and her Dad had the great foresight to leave the country as national socialism was spreading rapidly in the mid-1930s. She was the youngest of three siblings, and when they arrived in what was later going to be Israel, they had nothing. They lived in tents and worked long and hard hours in agriculture. 

She met my Grandfather, who was a fugitive from Russia, respectively Austria. He joined the British Army to fight in the Arab Revolt in Palestine.

I like to think that my Grandparents and their generation contributed a great deal to the creation of this unique country, and it bugs me that the coming generations kind of took everything for granted.

My Granddad had the opportunity to finally finish his studies, and upon graduating, he got a job offer in neutral Switzerland, and he didn't look back.  Stability, security, political freedom, what more do you want with a personal history like theirs? 

So Grandma herself may never have graduated from school, but she knew a lot about life in general, about people and about love, which makes her wiser than many fancy diploma holders. 

We share the same birthday, this may be an additional reason I still feel very connected to her, and I miss her a lot. Trying to fill her shoes is hard, but I can still try to keep her legacy alive. 

I am grateful to them because...

We spent a lot of good times together that will fuel me for a lifetime. She was a good listener, a great supporter, she loved to write, she enjoyed magnolia trees in the spring and she looked out for her people. 

I'm also thankful for the fact that she got to meet my son. She once fell when she still lived in an unassisted senior citizen's apartment, and she was bleeding badly. She told me she banged for her life. OK, poor choice of words here. She was too weak to call for help, but she still had her crutch, and she used it to hammer against the wall, hoping to alert a neighbor or someone walking in the hallway. It worked! 

When we visited her at the hospital, she said "you know I was not willing to die, I want to see that sweet little boy growing up as long as I can."

That's what she did for several years!

This concludes part I.

What lesson did 2023 teach you? What are you grateful for?