the same, and different

So many things are different this year.

So many things are the same.

Last year, I carried around many more pounds.  Last year I worked less.  Last year was better and worse than this year.  This year, the spring is colder.  This year I do more yoga.  Last year I had all my kids home for the summer.  Same with this year, but the kids are different. Last year, I had never published a book.  Last year I wrote many more blog posts than I have this year so far.  

Something about getting older makes me appreciate the cycles more than I used to, the constancy and the change. 

Here's me, pounds lighter, with a published book, reading from it in Amsterdam:

 

Last year, I cooked more, and I worked less.  This year I'm cooking differently.  Fewer carbs, fewer sugars, more animal, which goes against what I've always believed about eating healthily and ecologically.  Last year I cooked a lot more pasta.  Here's last summer's pasta:

This year, I have all of these same flowers in my garden, but at this same time last year, the lilies had bloomed, and this year, I'm still waiting for them.  This year Eva's flower arrangements sit on top of a white oval Ikea table, and the wallpaper is torn down, but not replaced.

Last year there was no oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, though our waters were in danger already.

Here are my eco-inspired poems in Poets for Living Waters.

This year I want to think about different and same, not better and worse.  

Here's to peace in accepting the way things are, not the way I wish they would be.  

Happy New Year in June!