What Have You Done?

THIS is it, guys. We've almost come full circle; we are now hours away from 2010. I keep repeating to my family members, "There's only 2 and three quarters more hours left of 2009! There's only 2 and a half more hours left of 2009! There's only 2 hours and 29 minutes left of 2009!" At this rate I am going to have a cushion thrown at me pretty soon, but I just can't contain my feelings. Feelings, because honestly, I don't really know how I feel about the new year - the new decade in fact.
My Mama, my twin sister and I are all gathered in her room. My Papa is in one of his cleaning moods where he basically
cleans everything in sight - except for the single kitchen sink I keep spotless with an eagerness that everyone claims is nearing the ranking of OCD. Right now I believe he's vaccuuming the whole place - he'll mop it next then come in and let it dry for a while, forced to delay his cleaning for a while.
I just had a look around this place. This room, this home. I've lived in it all my life and I don't really know if I've appreciated all the things that have come to me, delivered by sunny mornings and yellow-dressed afternoons, here. I think this is a perfect time to be really thinking about things. It's a perfect time to meditate on what I have been doing and obviously what I am going to be doing next year. But that part will come later, when the proverbial bridge has come, ready to be crossed.
I have done some things that I haven't had time in the restless throes and fights of yet-another-city-day, to regret. I find that even regret, that slight bitterness tinging, but not tarnishing, the warmth of a summer's day, is beautiful in itself. Even as she sits and she pours her heart out into golden teardrops that disappear into the folds of her blankets she is smiling slightly, for she knows that she has
made mistakes and she knows that now, yes, now, is the time to no, not correct them: for you can never undo something, but to simply do things to maybe bury them, maybe put them behind her, maybe make them better, maybe make other mistakes and make them worse. And she knows that even that will be okay, because there is always a next day, there is always a next week, there is a always a next month, a next year, a next decade. And should all that fail, maybe there is something beyond this thing that we call life, that we call existence. An afterlife, a journey up a tunnel with a light at the end, reincarnation..
The beginning is not the end and the end is not the beginning. And now she sits and she thinks. And she speaks and prays they listen, if only got a while.