New year, new Grandma, new resolutions

Looking back with nostalgia is a sign of old age, and since I am about to be called Grandma, I'd rather look forward. (I am still right out of college, it seems. Actually, I'm in college, earning a master's degree at UAA.)

2010 promises to be a big year. In addition to the baby (did I mention I'll be a grandmother any minute?) I have a second book coming out in May and am a little nervous since I was hit by a truck when the first one was published. But yesterday, I met a psychic visiting from Florida (she wanted to experience winter) who told me I was hard to kill, and that I'd have a long, happy life, which made me think maybe I don't need to resolve to have a colonoscopy this year after all. (I'm 50.)

I also think that becoming a grandmother is a call to be braver about standing up for what's important. Like keeping Alaska clean and our people and wildlife safe and healthy. It's good that we are far enough away from America to not catch what ails the Lower 48. I love it that Dana Stabenow has made sure that any movies or TV series made from her novels will be shot in Alaska, no matter how much money she loses, that Lance Mackey said he sometimes smokes medicinal pot on his dog sled, and that the governor is once again home in Juneau and that I don't know his children's names.

I have a few other resolutions for the New Year. I will shop as locally as I can, even if it costs a little more, and know that if I can't find it in Haines, then I probably don't need it anyway. Local stores are staffed by local families. I will be, as my more-centered friends say, "intentional" about shopping at home for the same reasons I replaced light bulbs last year -- to save the world.

I will also do more to eat locally. I have laying hens, and we fish, hunt and garden, but I have never planted potatoes because I don't have any dirt on the beach where I live (except the soil in my garden boxes.) My neighbor says I can grow potatoes in seaweed-filled garbage cans. I'm going to try it next summer and hope to use those Tlingit fingerling spuds that have been feeding people in these parts forever. When buying food, I will do my best to choose seasonal products that come from close to home. (This is hard when the grocery barge ships everything in from 1,000 miles away -- plus I like bananas.) Thank goodness Haines has both a brewery and a coffee roaster.

I will listen to more local music and make a point of not missing any Haines Arts Council events, as well as dragging my husband to at least a few of the Friday night dances at the Pioneer Bar this summer and open mic nights at the Fireweed. We have run marathons; surely we can stay up until midnight if we train carefully (and sip iced coffee instead of ale). I'll keep singing in the Haines women's choir too, but I'll organize my music folder so no one has to wait while I search for a song. (Home grown entertainment nourishes a community.)

I'm going to become a Big Sister because Jenny-Lyn does it, and Jacque does too, and they are busier than I am, and because not all of our young families are lucky enough to have aunts and grandmothers living in town.

I will continue to tune into the local public radio station more than the satellite radio, even when it drives me crazy, like it did on Christmas, by playing obscure Mexican classics, because it is our radio station and no one else's, and I hope it always will be.

I definitely will read fewer newspapers on my computer and more library books on my couch. (A trip to the library is never wasted time.)

I'll call my widowed mother-in-law and father more often. I can't wait to tell them they are great-grandparents. I hope they won't mind if the blessed event happens at 2 a.m.

Of course, that grandbaby is why I'm thinking more than ever about how the little things I do every day make a big impact on the world she'll inherit. (Also, kidding aside, I'll schedule the colonoscopy.)