01/01/2026
Ending the year not with grand plans or romantic tales, but in the very manner we end most days. Quiet, soft, slow.
No parties or bustling rooms.
No music drifting through the halls.
No trays of appetizers, no glasses raised and tinkling, no fireworks trembling the brisk night sky. No countdown, no midnight kiss.
Only the familiar rituals: the wee one settled into bed, the day tidied into its corners, pajamas pulled on, a warm cup of tea between our hands, teeth brushed, a gentle kiss goodnight. Lights out by ten. For this year 2025 taught us, steadily… insistently… the tenderness of routine and the deep, necessary kindness of rest.
We will wake to a small change in the calendar, a single fourth positioned digit turning like a page.
January 1st, 2026 will begin softly, slowly, and altogether ordinary. And it is in the ordinary that we will craft the memories meant to carry us through another year. Quietly watching our reflections grow, tracing the subtle ways time leaves its fingerprints on us.
The first crack of dawn glinting along the horizon. A sudden laugh, bright and startling, blooming like a sparkler in the dark of our amygdalas. Tiny moments stitched into the hippocampus. Little sensory heirlooms we will revisit in future years with long, reflective breaths. Inhale and exhale with our eyes closed, bringing up memories sliding from secret pockets and flickering like film slides against the backs of our eyelids.
I am grateful for the soft,
for the slow,
for the quiet,
for the holiness tucked inside the ordinary, and the gentle way it becomes us.
December 31 2025
Tasha Chenard