RIP 2012

One can't let go of a whole year without giving it a warm, affectionate farewell.
So many hours and heart-stopping minutes had passed with such swiftly varying emotions that Maya wonders if she is schizophrenic; a split personality who is mom, daughter, wife, grand daughter, sister-in- law, daughter-in-law, niece, sister, lover, girlfriend; completely separate of each other, none approving of each other, except her children, for whom there was no compromise. Her mom did not approve of her brother, her aunt disapproved of her grandmother and wouldn't allow her to talk with her, her sister-in-law disapproved of the mother-in-law and wouldn't allow phone calls with the mother-in-law, her brother disapproved of her community and wanted to create a new one, and her husband disapproved of everyone on the above list.
To keep afloat, Maya pretended nothing disapproving existed and everyone was loved and loving. She craved affection like the kitten whom her husband kept as a young man. "She always climbed into my lap the moment I sat down," he would say. "I would fling her away but she got right back each time. I made it a sport to push her away just to watch her come back."
Except Maya was not a kitten and didn't always come back. She understood his sport, long later, and got back in his lap only rarely to see if he had, perhaps, tired of the sport.
"Love, security, communication, happiness." Her four staple needs, outlined in a statement she made before she got married. If she did not get those, she did not eat, did not sleep, till she did.
Thus Maya spent 2012 creating her own circles of communication. She loved. She lived. She would be no kitten scared. She would be a kitten loved.
But she had to leave her strong, lively women companions behind in another country. And the new country had only cat-women to whom she purred politely and fed tea, listening to their opinions of how immoral the world around was.
She loved still. It was as natural as breathing. And 2013 beckoned, fresh-breathed and scrubbed clean, beautiful and arms wide open.