Every new year comes in with the promise of new and wonderful things. We make resolutions to be better in myriad ways: more compassionate and more charitable, more active and healthier, more informed and more productive.

But sometimes the new year arrives with the unexpected.

How do you continue life–at at any time of year–without a person or people who have always been in your life?

How can you begin to look the to days ahead? How do you lift the coffee pot from its base and pour coffee into only one cup? How do you prepare lunch for one and eat it by yourself? How do you fill the afternoon hours? How can you read the paper when there is no one with whom to discuss the news? How do you face the dinner table alone?

I’m trying to get my head–and my heart–around this, but right now I only feel lost. I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose the person with whom one has shared one’s daily life since adolescence. The person with whom you brought children into the world, children you struggled and worried over. The person you argued with and supported and stood up for. The person you shared Christmas Eve conversations with when you thought the kids were asleep. The one you kept on with after all the kids were grown and gone, working and traveling, talking and sleeping and waiting for the holidays.

There must be a way, but I can’t imagine how.

Down South in the past, Sundays were the day when families gathered for the biggest and best meal of the week. There would be fried chicken and mashed potatoes or pot roast and rice and gravy, and maybe a coconut meringue pie for dessert. Here in El Norte de Mexico, Sunday still is the day for family meals; there’s menudo and barbacoa for brunch and no matter what you were doing last night, you don’t just not show up.

Nowadays there are waits for tables in restaurants on Sundays, but with careers that don’t stop for weekends, video games that keep kids and adults obsessed, and chores that must be done, it’s just as likely that we are grabbing what’s available and eating it on the run on weekends as on the other days of the week.

But not on holidays.

We have pretty strong opinions about what should be found on the holiday table–and who should be found sitting around it.

Holiday dinners in our family are marathons of preparation. It begins days before the dinner will be served. Every mother wants every child, no matter what age, to have his or her favorite dish. Desserts are especially important.  I remember my grandmother and my mom making a dozen or more pies for holiday dinners when I was a teenager.  I myself once made eight–eight!–pies at Christmas because family members kept adding requests.

We have pretty strong opinions about what should be found on the holiday table–and who should be found sitting around it. My mom and dad are happiest when all four of their children are present with all our offspring.  These days two tables are needed to accommodate us. We four have lots to catch up on, since some of us see each other only on holidays. We have new ones to meet–at Thanksgiving this year, my brother’s new daughter-in-law and my sister’s new grandbaby.

Eating is not just for survival, and this has been brought to my close attention while I live alone here in Mexico. Eating is supposed to be a convivial act. I love cooking and eating fresh and healthy food, but I don’t like to cook just for me in this tiny kitchen with my limited equipment.

Lately, though, I’ve been feeling the Holiday spirit.  Yesterday I invited a fellow teacher over for dinner. I roasted beets and made a salad dressing from lemon and olive oil and a little honey, toasted some pecans and garlic to toss with some quinoa and a few raisins. A very simple meal, but I wouldn’t have done it just for myself. My enjoyment of the preparations came from the anticipation of sharing the food with someone.

Can’t wait for Christmas dinner.

I am here at a local school where I am to sub for a colleague who teaches English here.

Class is to begin at 8:00 a.m. It’s an exam day. It’s 7:50.

There’s no staff here yet.

I try to put myself into the mind of my coworker. I see her coming in the gate, stopping to chat with the doorman, as relaxed as as a rag doll and as nonchalant as . . .  well, as a Mexican.

I’m trying to slow my breathing.

Not only is this a completely new experience–being a substitute teacher in a Mexican school–I’m to administer exams for an ESL class. I have no experience and no qualifications for the task. I received the materials from la Mexicana last night at 8 o’clock.

I’m to administer exams for an ESL class. I have no experience and no qualifications for the task.

Students are trickling into the courtyard. Doves are cooing and finches twittering in the trees. The traffic noise is increasing outside the gate. I’m working at keeping the corners of my mouth turned up and my forehead relaxed.

7:58. Someone opens the outer door to the office. I go in with others who crowd the counter behind which three employees have arranged themselves. Those who came in with me seem to be paying for tuition. I hang back for five minutes and then step forward to the counter.

I am ignored completely.

After a minute I turn away and sit in a chair against the wall, waiting for the crowd to clear out. There’s now a line of about a dozen people. Each one seems to have a dispute to settle. I’m getting really annoyed. If I knew where the classroom is I’d just go and get started. I consider standing up and yelling.

Instead I take deep breaths and remind myself that I am not in the United States.

It’s 8:15.

I don’t usually write poetry

(unless I’m drunk and the moon is full).

I was grown in the Louisiana muck

Backwoods religion in sticky pine pews

Where “poetry” is Psalms and Song of Solomon

And getting drunk is not allowed–

especially for girls.