Getting going

It’s 2024, the Year of the Dragon. I’m having a good year: I’m healthy, my family is healthy, I’m in an established happy relationship, I live by myself in a house I love, I have good friends and I just got a new job that I’m excited about. Sometimes I feel embarrassed to tell others about how happy I am, in case it might somehow lessen their own wellbeing or happiness. As if there is only so much of it to go around, and I’ve been given an extra large share this year. I remind myself that things aren’t perfect – they never are – and I know they won’t last – they never do – but right now I’m happy and I want to enjoy it as much as I can.

In May I receive an email from one of my cousins in Sweden. She invites everyone in the extended family – the ‘clan’ as we affectionately call it – to a gathering in August to commemorate what would be her late father’s 80th birthday. I think I should go. Living in the UK, it’s not as often as I’d like that I spend time with the clan and attend gatherings like these. Since my uncle died, they also don’t happen as often as they used to. The family tree has grown wild and unruly with a new generation of branches, while other branches have fallen off. I make a mental note that I should go to this gathering.

In August it will be 80 years since my uncle Juris was born. In January, it was five years since he died. In October, it will be 80 years since he together with my grandfather and grandmother fled their homeland Latvia to start a new life in Sweden. This journey planted the seed of our family tree. That’s when the story begins that I’ve spent the past eight years trying to write. I should do something about this. It’s the year of the Dragon and no one is getting any younger.

6 June comes along. The 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. I read a New York Times article about an American veteran who died at the age of 101 while travelling to France to attend the commemoration events. I think that I have to do this now. This is the time to embark on the writing project of a lifetime. I have until 10 November.

This journey began for me in 2016. The Year of the playful Monkey that Patti Smith wrote so brilliantly about. That was the year that began with the death of Bowie, pinnacled with Brexit and ended with the election of Trump. I was 28 years old and in love. I’d made it to adulthood and got to do what I’d always dreamed of: quit a job to follow a dream. I was going to write a book about my family. I felt like Chihiro at the end of Spirited Away: I’d lived through my youth as if in a rushed dream and made it back to myself, knowing my full name and, while remembering everything that had happened to me, I was looking firmly forward. The past was with me, but the future was mine so I would not look back and make the same mistake as Orpheus. Everything was ahead.

Until life caught up with me. I ran out of money, out of steam, out of love. I made several attempts at the story of my life, and others besides. But none of them were this one. I’ve been happy and unhappy, the swings and roundabouts of life have come and gone. Now it’s the year of the Dragon, and it’s time for me to breathe some fire into this again.

I email my cousin to tell her that I’ll be there for the clan gathering she’s planning. Count me in. I’m coming.