Be Careful What You Wish For

New Year's Eve is approaching here on the Bay of Banderas, and we will be ringing in 2011 with friends at their beachfront hotel. There is a local tradition of bonfires being set ablaze up and down the entire beach, and people congregating to watch all the fireworks around the bay at midnight.

Last year, we were introduced to the ritual of writing down your wishes for the coming year on scraps of paper, and then setting them alight by throwing them on the bonfire - releasing them to the universe to be fulfilled.

On December 31, 2009 I wrote down my three main wishes - 1) to start writing (I had already chosen a name for a blog or a book - "The Burning Woman"); 2) for the stress of caring for and managing my ailing and very difficult mother to be alleviated (she'd had a stroke a year before and been partially paralyzed and hospitalized ever since); and, 3) for my financial situation to improve (business had tanked due to the global economic meltdown).

I threw those scraps of paper on the bonfire and watched them flame up and disappear into sparks in the night sky.

Then I forgot about them.

Until a little over a week later, my mother died at her nursing home after setting herself on fire with a candle in the middle of the night. It's pitiful and gruesome in the extreme - I was completely horrified, and briefly considered changing my proposed blog/book name, which had somehow turned out to be prophetic. But I kept it as the title is about me, it is not meant to reference my mother or her tragic demise.

My sister and I are the sole beneficiaries of her estate, and my inheritance has helped me greatly at a time of economic distress.

When I finally started blogging in April, Vibrant Nation found me within a month and started republishing my posts.

If we do the bonfire wishes ritual this year, I am going to be really careful about what I write down and release.

Todo bien. (It's all good.)