Like a velvety stray strutting into a house mostly unnoticed, the clock’s graceful hands slid over the hours, minutes, and seconds. Father Time, a seasoned illusionist, had dipped white-gloved fingers into his top hat; with an exaggerated flurry, he revealed the obvious. Because significant milestones demand corresponding rituals, the Chrystal ball dropped on schedule; rest assured that it did not shatter. Dick Clark’s absence was palpable and lamentable, of course, but not enough to halt the obligatory celebration.
Couples caressed. Surreptitious lovers stole kisses. Children smiled in their sleep. Nostalgia and melancholy, the Twin Towers, joy and sorrow, tears and Champagne erupted at once. The other side of the world yawned and snored. Our New Year was old news.
But here, in this hemisphere, 2014 had arrived. And as soon as that pounding headache subsided, New Year’s resolutions would come flying out of shirt pockets like acceptance speeches at award ceremonies. Yes, indeed, everything would change.
Just a blink later, arctic winds caused the earth to stiffen; multiple deaths came to those tender roots buried beneath its surface. Mere seconds afterwards, waves of infernal heat dissolved the same mounds of snow that had collapsed roofs and buried those well-intentioned resolutions. Newly formed rivers saturated the ground like womb-water, carrying to yet another term the ghosts of assorted perennials.
As the minute hand continued its automatic resolution, intoxicating peonies lost their effervescence. They, like other ephemeral things, retreated, giving way to drought resistant lavender, Rosemary, and the tough-skinned eggplant. The first and last heirloom tomato appeared and disappeared within seconds of each other. The world’s hottest peppers succumbed to the frost. Not even their memory remained.
Maples, sycamores, and magnolias engaged in their ceremonial strip-tease. Voyeurs from various parts of the world rushed to capture on film skinny trees, fat trees, tall trees, curvy trees, and every other tree in between. Majestic oaks peeled their coverings—one leaf at a time, until nothing was left but the bark. These unwitting exhibitionists posed on the median dividing highways; they swayed in alleyways; leaned on street lampposts. As passive as the glances of now-deceased, long-ago It-Girls in peek-a-boo, skin-toned chiffon, the naked trees have grown indifferent.
The seasons came and went nonchalantly, methodically, without interruption. Without remorse. Without apology. Fall and winter sniffed, licked, scratched. Spring urinated; summer defecated as it pleased, leaving actors and spectators with heaps of unanswered questions.
Those among us prone to self-analysis will gaze, good and perplexed, at the old New Year that brought birthdays, weddings, eulogies, baptisms, first menses, gray hair, divorces, murders, muggings, verdicts, hurricanes, floods, fires, and Fridays that were more bleak than black.
2014 brought bitter cold, heat, passion, death—lots of it. 2014 took. Stole. Snatched. It will be remembered, like all the old New Years before it, as The Good Old Days and Hell, at once. As Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. . .”
And as Father Time’s fingers continue to inch toward the new New Year, the new midnight, some recall all that did and didn’t materialize. How well or horribly did we play life’s game version 2014? The game of life? And death. Who won? Who lost? Was it a tie? Let’s rewind–in slow motion. There is a lot to do in preparation for the new midnight. The windows require new veils. The arctic air will soon be here, dragging in its wake rain, blooms, infernal heat, naked trees, and too soon afterwards an old New year.
KATIA D. ULYSSE was born in Haiti, and moved to the United States as a teen. Her short stories, essays, poetry, and interviews have been published in numerous literary journals, including several issues of Caribbean Writer, Meridians,Calabash, Peregrine: Amherst Writers, among others. Anthologies include The Butterfly’s Way, Mozayik, Brassage, Haiti Noir, and others. Her first children’s book, Fabiola Can Count, was published as part of One Moore Book’s Haiti Series, in 2013. Her first book of fiction, DRIFTING, published by Akashic Books, is critically acclaimed. Katia is also an avid gardener and flag-maker in the tradition of Haiti’s sequence and beads. Her flags, many in private collections, were introduced at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.
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