A Clean Slate

I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t want this … Who doesn’t want a clean slate in their lifetime – throughout their lifetime? This idiom is one I have counted on and am, once again, counting on as I enter this new year and consider the things that may end and what new beginnings are waiting.

Of course, health is right up there at the top of the list, with copyediting following close behind.

Slate was what students recorded their classwork on in the 1800s. You remember – chalkboards, and the nerve-shattering screech of that wonderful chalkboard line-drawing tool (we loved it, we hated it). So many fond memories. But what I loved most of all (and what I bet many of us loved) was when the slate was wiped clean.

I was always amazed at how a chamois could wipe a slate so clean that it looked almost new … and I remember the satisfaction of being the first to print or write on that clean, green blackboard. Yes, green. Green because black reflected too much light. Black (as in blackboards) because the original boards were made of black slate.

And we were both silently and simultaneously aghast and delighted when a rectangular chamois would defiantly tumble out of a teacher’s hand and bounce off their freshly-pressed attire (even more fun when they were wearing dark clothes) and onto the floor – often paired with a sigh or some subvocalizations involving indiscernible or barely-discernible words – leaving chalk dust to dance in the sunlight.

Not sure why we found that so scintillating – a bit of dark classroom humour, perhaps, that broke through the blackboard banality.

I am pausing now to look up at the recently purchased, newly installed chalkboard on our office wall. Now all that is needed is chalk – the dustless variety (even chalk has come a long way).

Anyway, as satisfying as those boards are, it is even more satisfying to see a clean slate. It represents a new opportunity, a completely fresh start and a chance for old things to be forgiven, if not forgotten, and for new things to take their place.

Two thousand and twenty-five is that clean slate that we’ve barely begun to write on. Imagine what you would like to see on that slate, this year, then pick up that “chalk” and just go for it. Oh, there will undoubtedly be occasions when some screeching will be heard, but that’s all part of the journey.

So, here’s to a clean slate, where a clean slate would feel helpful, and a happy new year. And here’s a piece of “chalk.” It’s time to dream and to plan and to start creating.