IF you were to enter a home in ancient Rome, you would find in the doorway a dog with two heads. A statue, of course. It is Janus, the Roman god of the doorway. One head looked to the past, the other to the future. Since the first month of the year has this two-fold function, it acts as a bridge between past and future, the Romans called it January. It is a demanding month, a frightening month, perhaps more frightening than a birthday. It requires more than remembering to put the right year on our letters and our checks. It is a threshold, a passage, and every threshold makes us pause. Every passage leaves us different from the way we were.
