AFTER THE BALL IS OVER…AFTER THE STARS ARE GONE…

Why do I remember this old song from way back in the 1890’s by Charles K Harris before anybody I knew even existed? Well, in primary school, Sister Cecilia used to sit at the piano and plonk out this melancholic old number, drawn out and dripping with nostalgia and we, a bunch of little girls dragged out the sorrowful notes in our shaky little voices. And it’s the chorus that always reminds me of…after the Christmas and New Year celebrations… when the tree comes down and the lights blink out and the song and dance of yesterday’s merriment are just fading echoes in the air…` After the ball is over, after the break of morn. After the dancers’ leaving, after the stars are gone. Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all. Many the hopes that have vanished, after the ball…’

Yes, it’s all very sad and weepy, but the thing is this…How do we pick ourselves up after the celebrations?…How do we get back to normal life? For those of you who are still working…you have my sympathies because I always found it difficult to get back to work. But I’m not working anymore!…Thank goodness! But the question still looms large…What do we do now that the ball is over??? What else but…. MAKE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS!!!! Friends kept sending me well-meaning  quotes inspired by the pandemic… to be more compassionate and love our fellow men and love them more…something along the lines of Woody Guthrie’s 1942 New Year’s resolution list… `love mama, love papa, love Pete, love everybody…’ Well… mama and papa are gone and I don’t know who Pete is and …LOVE EVERYBODY????…is a pretty tall order. I need something more attainable.

 This takes me way back to my primary school days when the school year kicked off in January and I started the New Year with a bagful of old text books, hand-me-downs from my sisters, which could really dampen any spark of a resolution, of being a more diligent student etc etc. But then… along with those dog-eared books I also toted brand new exercise books and… in Standard Three… a new fountain pen, a pot of ink and the promise of a new set of skills…learning how to write in cursive…letters joined with graceful curly loops which got me all fired up with ambition. I remember the teacher looking over the shoulders of my classmates and tut tutting…` Fowl scratching!’ she would say, pointing at their indecipherable letters. But when she came to me, it was all glowing praise and my handwriting thrived in that warm glow and she rewarded me with…writing lists for her, with the names of the students, so she could award marks for the different activities and subjects. I had to stay behind during recess and write those interminable lists and my fingers ached and I wondered if I was being rewarded or punished. My resolve then gradually weakened and so did my handwriting and I finally with such glee was demoted to the ranks of the fowl scratchers and was promptly released from my duties and squealed and ran around with those chicken scratchers in the school yard at recess time.

In secondary school…I don’t recall making any fired up resolutions. We were a bunch of giggly girls, pooling in cliques and whispering about boys… we were so deprived of their presence, being in a convent school…and my only resolve was to get mum to agree to letting me attend friends’ parties. So when mum saw sister number three and me, all studious and conscientiously bent over our books, she buckled. So off we went to this once in a month Saturday night parties in fishnet tights and mini dresses. We eyed the boys and they eyed us back and we shivered and shook to groovy numbers of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and the Bee Gees and then when the tempo slowed and the lights dimmed with Hey Jude, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, This Guy’s In Love With You and other sentimental numbers, we did the Stroll…a slow dance… with some awkward teenage boy. Then suddenly my sister and I would remember our CURFEW. We had to be back by the stroke of twelve! They called us Cinderellas in those days. A friend would rush us home in his dad’s car and as we ran through the front gate breathlessly, our dog Bruno in extreme excitement, would jump on us and rip those fishnet tights. If we were even a few minutes late mum would mete out her Catholic boarding school punishment. We would kneel on our very Catholic knees in our shredded tights in a corner in the dark for half an hour…I shuddered to think what our friends would have said if they had seen us…`after the ball.’

At university I made no resolutions at all. I was too busy with larger issues like…WHO AM I? and I NEED TO FIND MYSELF and so on. When I started working and faced with a bunch of unruly kids or thoroughly bored ones…I asked other questions like…WHAT AM I DOING HERE? Or IS THIS IT FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE? Juggling a school and family in Crete spared no time for resolutions…WHAT RESOLUTIONS??? I had no time for such luxuries…it was just one big mad rush like a hamster treading the wheel …students and exams and spouse and child and homework and after school activities and the dreaded housework and cooking…if they ever got done.

 And…NOW…that I’m retired I’ve come a full circle and am… PONDERING RESOLUTIONS. Judging from my track record, I need something not just attainable but sustainable. I can’t deal with those  noble issues shaking the world up at the moment like…SAVE THE EARTH!…SAVE THE PLANET!…SAVE OUR PROGENY!…I’ll leave that to Greta Thunberg. But I can execute the platitudes from the mouths of the modern gurus…CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME!…which I interpret as beginning with MYSELF…If I err, I’ve got nothing to worry about because they say…DON’T BEAT YOURSELF UP!…FORGIVE YOURSELF!…and finally, shamelessly…LOVE YOURSELF! So that gives me a lot of pampering the SELF to do and it may take the whole of 2022!

So cheers and have a wonderful year!