The post of good cheer.

I am moved by the fullness and luckiness of my life.

Why?

Because out of the blue, I just received a wonderful care/Christmas package and card from a friend that was so thoughtful—and so unexpected—that it actually brought tears to my eyes. I’ve known this woman for years, less and more well, but it was through our mutual love of writing that we’ve recently connected so deeply.

Because I went to a lovely Christmas party last night at the beautiful home of one of my Vermont classmates, Caitlin, and spent the night drinking and talking with her and another classmate, Suzanne, and their respective fiancé/husbands. Suz and Caitlin finally met Dave, and Dave liked them and their guys and so, instead of going shy on me, was chatting up people left and right at the party. And I see game nights and more postpacket parties looming in our collective graduate future. I remember how nervous I was all of last spring, waiting to hear whether I’d been accepted into graduate school and then, once in, doubting whether I was of the caliber to belong there. I was nervous about the graduate part, the writing part, the people part, and the being away from Dave=home part. Finally, June came and I went to Vermont, and my life sprung open as sudden and full as those first buds of spring. And what I have to look forward to now is simply more and more of that springing, and that opening, and that budding, and that blooming.

Add to that the holidays cards we’ve been getting—and the e-mails, and the texts—and a feeling returns to me that I haven’t experienced in years. A gratitude to life. The aforementioned being moved by the fullness and luckiness of my life. A feeling born fully formed within, one that swirls rapidly inside until it cannot be contained and bursts outward, like Athena stepping delicately but with war-like purpose from the split head of Zeus. It leaves me in overwhelming love with everything.

I want to hold onto this feeling forever, because this is how I want to live my life: fully present and grateful for what I’ve been given.

Too often I get caught up with the whole dog-eat-dogness of it all—what with the endless to do lists and Big Dreams That Call For Capital Letters Here—and I forget the most important thing.

People. All the people in my life and the ways—littlest to most profound, and how often I don’t know which is which—that we touch each other’s lives. All the ways we are connected.

If I accomplish nothing else in 2009, let me just remember that.

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NONSEQUITUR TIME!

As a person who copyedits and proofreads obituaries as part of my job, I’ve become a little obsessed with them and how they read. This is not as dark and weird and inappropriate to the holiday season as you might think—or at least, I don’t think so—because the best obituaries, like the best wakes, are about the life lived, not the death, uhmm, died, I guess.

I often think of what I’d like my obituary to say. First of all, I’d like it to read that I died in, you know, 2070 or something, survived by my loving husband Dave and just oodles of devoted children and grandchildren.

And I used to add onto that that I wanted to be remembered as a highly skilled editor. As a successful and prolific writer who took chances and wild leaps and never stopped experimenting but who still always made Oprah’s book club.

Actually, I’d still want those things, I think.

But careers … money … real estate … even fame and publication and rights to one’s novel for the making of Very Lucrative Film Deals … well, it's all well and good and I certainly wouldn't turn any of it down, but you can’t take it with you.

Holding onto the long aforementioned gratefulness, before I get sucked into stressing and grumbling about all I need to get done between now and Sunday night in preparation for my back-to-back trips to Vermont and Dave’s birthday surprise extravaganza, I’d say if there was only room in my obituary for a single line, I’d like it to be this:

SHE WAS LOVED AND SHE LOVED.

Or

LUCKY IN LOVE; ALL KINDS OF LOVE.

Or

SHE GAVE BETTER THAN SHE GOT.

Or

GOOD ENOUGH. SMART ENOUGH. AND DOGGONEIT, PEOPLE LIKED HER.