New Year’s Wishes & Greetings

Now that Hanukkah and Christmas have passed, all that is left of the frenzied holiday retail blizzard are drifts of tissue paper and boxes settled in corners. Whereas Advent is full of purpose, determination, and deadlines for most of us, the advent of a new year finds us in a more desultory frame of mind. Resolutions notwithstanding, things get done — or not — depending on our mood. And now that we have received so much in the way of good tidings, we are in the mood to give something away: good wishes and greetings for the New Year.

We greet the night shift at the Blue Colony, and the spouses of school board members, EMTs, and doctors on call.

Best wishes to the wives of cigar smokers, to the parents of kids learning the saxophone, and to the mothers of soldiers.

Good luck to motorists attempting a left-hand turn at the flagpole, to film buffs at the Friday night early show at Edmond Town Hall, and to silent secret admirers everywhere.

Greetings to the pothole patchers, traffic island horticulturists, shopping cart retrievers, and to the floor waxers at Newtown Middle School.

Best of luck to the men starting new beards, to Route 34 commuters, to barefoot summertime strollers at Hawley Pond, and to earnest writers with few skills and fewer original ideas who read E.B. White’s essays.

Good luck in the new year to neighbors of nocturnal barking dogs, to the volunteers who roll up hoses after January fires, and to the coaches of the under-8 teams of the Newtown Soccer Club.

Greetings to school bus drivers, to the gentlemen at the senior center, to midsummer canoeists on Lake Zoar, and to all others who gamely face overwhelming odds.

And best wishes to those whose first thought in the new year is of a loved one lost. May happiness find you quickly in 2007.