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Last December, there weren't any Christmas parties happening given pandemic precautions in place kept so many of us apart, not together in our customary holiday gatherings.
So that made it extra special this past week when members of the Ohio Valley Business and Professional Women not only held their first in-person meeting and dinner in more than a year and a half, but it happened appropriately during the Christmas season.
It's good to feel a little normal for a change, a little celebratory.
The setting for this meeting was a venue not entirely easy to find for some of us who are more navigationally challenged than others. One member would confess in an "LOL" post-event group e-mail that she didn't use MapQuest on the way home from Follansbee to Mingo Junction, missed "one very important turn" and kept driving, ultimately seeing a "Welcome to Pennsylvania" sign.
On the up side, though, she joked that the "scenic route" had afforded the opportunity to see "some lovely Christmas lights."
One staple of any BPW meeting, aside from the networking, camaraderie, laughter and casual atmosphere that are its hallmarks, is that it begins with a go-around-the-room time where members introduce themselves for the benefit of updates or any newbies in the mix. It's a chance to offer some professional and personal insights.
I like this approach and appreciate the stories I hear about these ladies, including their career choices, job duties and community involvement. I've always believed that if we shadowed each other for a week on our jobs, how surprised we'd be by what that position actually entails, how that work day pans out.
Typical days on the job for many of us are often anything but that.
For me, my turn for "Hi, I'm Janice Kiaski, the community editor" was yet another reminder in this group setting of how true the idiom "time flies" really is.
December is an anniversary month for me with this year marking the start of 43 years at the newspaper as an unofficial recorder of local history.
I think I've reached dinosaur status.
The print industry has changed dramatically through the years, to be sure, but one thing that remains a constant is that I'm still enjoying this journey. I still look forward to going to work. I don't mind when Sunday fades into Monday and the start of a new work week arrives, ready or not.
I like reporting on the positive community news that promotes club happenings, the fundraisers important to service organizations and churches, those award acknowledgments that people deserve and the mission of groups, among them the Ohio Valley Business and Professional Women.
And I enjoy the opportunity to share the human interest stories of local residents or those with ties to the area.
This weekly column is a connection as well to you readers that I appreciate most, a forum in which I've learned has led to being taped in a scrapbook for posterity, thumb-tacked to a bulletin board, secured behind a magnet on a refrigerator or traveling by mail to someone who'll relate to something I've experienced and shared.
(I've been face up, too, doing important work lining a bird cage or two. Look out below!)
Many are the times people have told me that what's happened in my household has happened in theirs. Something hits home or rings so very familiar.
It's an honor when strangers go out of their way to say, "Hey, I really look forward to your column."
Thank you for that. What a gift in a season as much about receiving as giving.
As we move toward Christmas this week, I hope you navigate toward it and enjoy the journey, including any detours that offer an unexpected glimpse of "some lovely Christmas lights."
(Kiaski, a resident of Richmond, is a staff columnist and community editor for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times. She can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)