What are you waiting for this year?

January is a time when a lot of us feel compelled to add complexity to our lives - through big and small resolutions. I am not opposed to this practice! I like rituals. If I had a more cooperative brain, I might be able to experience January as an invigorating start to each new year. That would be nice.

Instead, it strikes me as a waiting time. It's one of the coldest months of the year where I live. My blood and brain seem to move more slowly. In January, I always find myself waiting for something, anything.

Waiting means to be still, to see if something happens, to observe carefully. Which I guess is kind of perfect, for the start of this new iteration of Pocket Observatory.

So, for me, January is a waiting time.

Sitting in a hospital waiting room this last weekend, anxious for my nephew to make his debut, made some narrative sense. He was born very early in the morning. He is very beautiful and very small. He'll be in the NICU for a little while. He just needs a little extra care.

He's my little brother's son. My little brother who I remember first holding when I was ten years old. It's been a bit surreal to watch that once little boy stand over the NICU crib of his now little boy, waiting for his son to be able to breathe and eat on his own. I think that's so much of parenthood - waiting.

And maybe, I don't know, maybe waiting is a proof of love.

And in the cold, in hospital rooms, in the dark, in January, there's some comfort in that thought. Because love always arrives on time, even as it makes us wait for something, anything.