Here we find ourselves at the end of another year. Each day is a little longer now, and every extra minute of light in the sky feels like a gift.

Last year was a surprise, wasn’t it? Who expected this pandemic to go on so long? Living this way is like learning to ride a bicycle, forever. Just when the strangeness levels out and we find our balance, another storm washes out the road. Then even after the puddles are dry, we have to walk the bike for another few months — out of caution, or fear, or habit, or because we’ve collectively forgotten how to get going. And who can tell the difference anymore? It’s not as if there will suddenly come an end to this, a white flag to wave, or a truce to announce on the front page of the papers. We just keep going.

At my house, we’re enjoying the break from school and activities. But it’s a short break this year and the kids go back to school on Monday, Jan. 3. On Tuesday, A-Band rehearsals resume, and that afternoon the girls’ basketball team has a home game versus Oak Bluffs.

Honestly, that’s about all the actual news I have this week. People are away, people are holed up at home with their new presents, people are uncommunicative. It’s all good.

Since extra-familial gatherings are frowned upon, I asked around my own household for people’s reflections on the new year. Twenty says, “2021 was so challenging, what can stop us in 2022? Besides a meteor?” Fifteen wants to draw more in the new year. Twelve says she is already perfect. Eleven wants to get better at football and read more. Eight would also like to get better at football. Two wants to get out of regular clothes and put on his too-small truck footie pajamas. Immediately.

Happy New Year, West Tisbury. We will miss those we lost, and welcome those who found their way here. We’ll walk the beach in winter and contemplate eternity, or live right in the moment with people we like a lot. We will make music, and if we can’t make it, we’ll go and hunt it down. We’ll admire Daisy Kimberly’s incredible Nancy Luce soft sculpture at the library, and nurse our own projects, even if nothing else could ever be as amazing as Nancy (there’s yarn around the rocking chair! The entire chair!). We will order seeds and read books and get gas up-Island on Sundays. We’ll stack wood, scrape windshields, and make do. We’ll just keep going. It’ll be great.