New beginnings

New Year's brings with it memories of days past slipping through the cracks of this moment now. I find them littering my path, like fallen leaves scattered on the trails of forgotten days of autumn.

Distant memories found me yesterday as the puppies and I hiked along the ridge of our favourite park. They came bristling in with the stiff breeze that blew in from the west, rustling the dry prairie grasses that lined the trails upon which we walked. Above, the sky was clear blue, the white ridges of the Rockies rolled across the western horizon and to the south, the city skyline challenged the distant peaks, taunting them with their power to reach the skies.

This was my first Christmas with C.C. We both agree it was a stellar first attempt and bodes well for the Christmases together we look forward to. Firsts displace pasts and in the passing away of days gone by, memory lingers, teasing the tendrils of time and space, tugging at the edges of new memory laid on the path to tomorrow.

I felt the tug of those memories as I walked in the crisp, clear air. Felt them blow through my mind with the chill of the wind against my cheeks. Tiny tears pricked my eyes. A gentle wave of sadness washed through me as softly as the tide washing away footsteps in the sand. Their rhythmic ebb and flow eases the evidence of someone's lingering presence into the depths of the ocean of possibilities that stretches before me. That was then. This is now.

I smile and shake my head.

There was so much drama back then when I was with the man who is the lie. So many inconsistencies, incomprehensible circumstances, indescribable confusion. I thought about that first Christmas all those years ago. Confusion had already taken hold. Fear had me gripped in its reins. The story of his dying heart. The looming fear of an operation that would supposedly cure the disease that was stealing his life from mine. The stealthy infestation of his lies eroding my peace of mind as the web he wove began to block the sun and stars and air. The cloying vapours of his lies clogging my breathing.

And then I breathed. Gentle tears flowed through my heart. Tears are memory's gateway to the sun and air. Tears refresh. Tears purge and wash away the debris of those times clogging memories pathway to renewal. Tears are my friend.

There is no end to memory. There is an end to memory's pull when I let memory flow freely and step fearlessly into today letting my tears wash away the footsteps of someone else's treacherous passing through the journey of my life long ago.

This is the time of new beginning. This is a new dawn. A new day. A new romance to cherish and nurture and hold in tender loving arms. This is love.

The question is: Where do your tears free your peace of mind and set you free to begin afresh? Where do you step free of someone else's footsteps and leap with joy into the loving waters of life today?