2016 in Retrospect

Another year means another year to look back upon.  Let’s get started, shall we?

A life goal of mine is to go on a trip abroad once every five years.  That began in 2006 when I went to Spain and France with a group from my high school, and continued in 2011 when I went to study abroad.  Now, in January 2016, I went with my mother on a tour across Spain and Portugal, a two-week trip that I will always remember fondly.  We began in Barcelona, spending three days there touring the city and the surrounding areas (Montserrat and Sagrada Familia were my favorite places there).  Then we went on to Valencia, where we had perfect weather by the sea.  My dad contacted us around this time, and we told him it was twenty-four degrees (Celcius), just about perfect by our standards.  He replied, “Yeah, it’s twenty-four degrees here, too (Fahrenheit).”  Somehow, nice weather while you’re abroad is nicer when they’re having rotten weather back home.  Our last stop in Spain was Seville, where we got lost in the marketplaces, watched a flamenco show, and got way overcharged by gypsies outside of a cathedral.  Then we took the worst sleeper train ever over to Coimbra in central Portugal, where my mother’s dear friend Lou picked us up.  After some much-needed rest in their guest room, we began our exploration of Portugal, visiting two different, marvelous castles and touring through Lisbon.  As the crown on a wonderful trip, Mom and I spent half a day in London on our way back. 

In comparison, February was very quiet, and I found myself disbelieving that anything so exciting had happened at all.  We had one of our monstrous snows, and I visited an old friend for an unhealthy slumber party and some catch-up time, but otherwise my calendar was pretty clear.

In March I picked up an online class series that would last me through to August.  It was a religious studies course offered through Harvard, a beautifully managed course featuring each of the five major world religions: Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism.  I didn’t take the courses for credits, but I learned a lot.  When I wasn’t busy with the class, I was doing things like working, taking my sister to the movies for her birthday, and driving off to Richmond to visit a friend and her new baby.

In April I performed my first non-Christmas concert with the Roanoke Symphony Chorus.  Carmina Burana by Carl Orff was the featured piece, and though I’d been slow to warm up to the strange music, I came to love it by the end.  I also did some housesitting, attended a wedding, and took my kitten to the vet for her Bob Barker treatment.

In May I began to attend a bible study with a very irreverent atmosphere: at Beer and Bible, any question is allowed and encouraged, no matter how strange or wild.  I’ve been attending ever since, and loving it, and maybe a future blog post will feature some of the gems I’ve collected from that crazy group.  In addition, my brother graduated from college, the last of the O’Connor clan to do so.  He’s now working in software development; don’t ask me any more, because I wouldn’t be able to explain it.  I do know that I’m proud of him.

One thing that happened in the spring that I forgot to mention, but that filled most of June, was the initial posting of my angel blog, Tales of Love from the Stolen Earth.  This was a project I had been working on for some time, and finally I decided to share it with the internet at large.  The story line follows the work of an angel, Asa’el, who has just begun his work as a Cupid.  Asa’el, fascinated by the shadowed world of mankind, documents his work and his adventures by way of a blog, just like the humans do.  It’s been a joy to work on, and with any luck the story will continue to grow.

My birthday in July passed quietly, but not unnoticed.  The day before I had the chance to participate in a photo shoot with a friend who made my hair into a rainbow, and the week afterward another friend had a little dinner party for me, which was an absolute delight.  I’d never had anyone do anything like that for me before, and I absolutely loved it.  Later in the month I flew out to Seattle with my family for my cousin’s wedding, which was more like a giant family reunion.  It was so good to see everyone. 

August began auspiciously with attendance at a performance of Twelfth Night at the Blackfriars Theatre in Staunton.  If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it: it is a beautiful space, and home to the American Shakespeare Center, which is such a talented group of performers.  Twelfth Night is one of my favorites, and I so enjoyed the performance.  I also had the chance to bring a dear friend along who was immediately smitten with the space and the performance.  Isn’t that a wonderful warming thing, to share something you love with someone you love, and have them love it, too?  The rest of the month, however, was filled with upheaval, as Ruby Tuesdays decided quite suddenly to close the store at which I was a server.  Come the second week of August, I find all of the shifts I had written into my calendar were whited out.  Thankfully, one of those lucky coincidences happened to me when I was talking to a friend of mine.  She mentioned that she had just begun working for a smoothie shop which was looking for a new manager.  She gave the owner my information, and by the end of the month I was hired and working again.  In the end it all came out for the best—I have a better position with a less stressful atmosphere, and I gained several new friends in the bargain.

September brought with it another trip to Richmond, where a baby’s high fives and his older sister’s perfect curls utterly stole my heart.  I also took on a new project, a little children’s choir at my church.  Though it started off a bit tentatively, the choir is still going on, and I have a handful of dedicated children who love to come every other week to sing with me.  What more could a music lover ask for? 

October was full of nothing special—visits with friends, bible studies, choir rehearsal, a new online class—philosophy this time—dogsitting, and a visit home for my mother’s birthday: all the lovely little things that enrich a life.

November brought a few visits home, including the requisite Thanksgiving celebration.  It also brought the return of Harry Potter movies into my life—no small thing, for a world which has been a part of my life since childhood.  If you haven’t seen Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them yet, please stop depriving yourself.  It was, well, fantastic.

December was exhausting.  Aside from Sunday, I believe I worked every day for the first three weeks, and then I also had multiple choir rehearsals and performances, not to mention a funeral out of town.  My grandmother passed away in the first week, my father’s mother, and the last of my surviving grandparents.  She had been failing for some time, so it wasn’t very unexpected, but very sad all the same.  She was a marvelous woman.  Still, the funeral provided me with an opportunity to visit with my dad’s side of the family, some of whom I haven’t seen in years.  Among them was my cousin’s adopted son, quite possibly the most beautiful six-month-old I have ever met. 

Babies and journeys, new lessons and new endeavors—2016 may have been a rough year for the world, and it may have been for me, too, but with the struggle came many joys and blessings.  I wouldn’t change a thing.  Here’s to an equally exhausting, exhilarating, maddening, delightful 2017.