by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

As has been previously noted, the holidays have been a bit of a whirlwind around here. Lucky for me my wife Lisa is a perennial holiday superstar, and has once again made our home beautiful and festive. If all this merriment were left up to me it would be looking and feeling markedly less so.

So, as I contemplate my annual year-end gratitude list, I must again start with my blind luck in marrying up. Way up. How Lisa maintains her joyful outlook and saintlike kindness with me around all the time is a profound mystery. She’s the engine that makes our life happen. I’m so grateful she kept me around another year.

I’m supremely grateful for my kids and grandchildren. It’s been fascinating for this only child to watch my kids grow through their early childhoods, the (sometimes) dreaded teenage years, young adulthood, and even full-fledged adulthood. I marvel at how they share the same DNA, but are all so different, with different needs, different ways of expressing themselves, and varying degrees of help required from their old man. I’m more and more grateful for the privilege of being their father with every passing year.

Though I have kvetched relentlessly this year, I am also grateful to be gainfully employed doing something I love. I know I am damn lucky to have the freedom to write about whatever cockamamie ideas pop into my head week-to-week. And I’m proud of the work we do here at the Courier. A surprisingly small group of dedicated pros make this thing happen, reporting, writing, shooting photos, editing copy, and designing our pages. And still another collection of hardworking pros raise money, sell and design ads, bill for those ads and subscriptions, and finally, deliver the Courier to you. Without every piece of that machine churning in unison, this thing collapses. It’s a remarkable dance, and we do it 60 times a year. I’m grateful for the hard work. It’s clarifying, and gives me purpose. After every issue is sent off to be printed, I feel relieved and proud as another of our little editorial babies enters the world. Grateful.

Our friend circles naturally contract as we get older. My own once big ol’ tent has become a smattering of lawn chairs under a Costco pop-up. In years past, parties would bubble up spontaneously. I saw my large group of friends every weekend, and even during the week. We ate, drank, and caroused together. Those days are long gone, having given way to much more intimate, quieter, earlier occasions, with no hangovers and better food. And I find myself cherishing my time with friends more than ever. This year brought still more memorials and celebrations of life. In years past they were mostly somber affairs, but something has turned. For one, they’re less shocking. We’re all getting older, and if not becoming accustomed, we’re at least less surprised. Increasingly, they’re becoming hopeful, poignant even. I’ve been reunited with old friends, some I hadn’t thought about in decades, leaving me even more grateful for the enduring friendships of my everyday people.

A couple years back Lisa and I decided we were approaching the “it’s now or never” years for travel, and pledged to get to it. Since then we’ve been lucky to see much of Europe, with plans in the works for many other destinations. Spending time away from the bubble of America has been a reset. Seeing the U.S. through others’ eyes and hearing their perspectives has made me reevaluate some of the truths I had assumed were fundamental. I can’t say doing some new critical thinking on America has been fun. It hasn’t. But it’s been necessary, and I’m grateful for the chance to widen my view. Clearly many Europeans live more civilized lives than us Americans. They take care of their people. They enjoy healthy food. They work to live, not the other way around. It’s been good to be humbled, and to see the possibility of a better way for our kids.

Music has been part of my life since I joined my first band at 15, and I’m grateful to still enjoy the making and playing. After 46 years, the hard parts aren’t getting easier. Like I’ve written regarding aging, I’m finding myself less and less willing to sit still for bull%$it in the music realm. All the chasing — for gigs, fans, record sales, reviews, whatever — is wearing thin. You can only take so much rejection and indifference before you either quit caring about all that stuff, or quit altogether. For me, for now, it’s the former. The good news is creating is still a rush. If that ever goes away, if writing a song doesn’t flood my brain with serotonin, that’s when I’ll be done in this bruising but intermittently glorious “business.”

And finally, I’m most grateful for the one thing that makes all this other stuff possible: my health. Anyone who knows me can see I’m not a triathlete. I’m a 61-year-old man with a prominent muffin top and increasingly less white hair. I’m clearly not in the best possible shape, but I’m very, very grateful to be doing as well as I am (knocking wood). As the ever more frequent memorials and RIP social media posts make abundantly clear, there’s only one way this thing is going to end, and we best make the best of it while we’re here. I do not take for granted that I’m able to be with my family, work, travel, and get around with relative ease (knocking wood again). I know I could always be doing more for my health, and I see the day coming when I’ll be forced to confront some of my eating and drinking habits and exercise more. For now though, I accept this imperfect, bulging ‘round the middle vessel, this hairy bag of guts. It ain’t pretty, but it got me this far.

Happy New Year folks.