It's 10:51 p. m. on Thursday, December 30; only an hour and nine minutes until New Year's Eve, which is my favorite day of the year not counting my birthday.
New Year's Eve day, when we make peace with the year that was and look to a new beginning.
New Year's Eve, which for the last ten years I've never known where I would be celebrating but for my whole life it's been exactly the right place and the right celebration. One year Fred drank half a bottle of cheap Champagne and while he was throwing up, I was stifling giggles with a pillow. One year I was in Times Square with my friends Brian and Susan and a few million other people. One year I wore a really cute, short red velvet dress and a Sweet Potato Queen website tiara and danced the night away. (I'd just moved to Louisville; Brian was here, having helped me move; and we were drinking Seabreezes, which taste entirely too much like Kool-Aid.) One year Michael came home with big boxes of sparkly things and also tubes with a kazillion tiny bits of paper in them that popped and then spewed the papers all over the house, or our heads. And then there were the New Year's Eves on Middle Bass, when we'd have potluck dinners, and then the children would play Pick Up Sticks and other games kept in a box in the corner while the adults played euchre (which I haven't played since the sixties); and then suddenly the card tables would be down and the hats on and we'd all be singing "Auld Lang Syne." (These parties were held in the front of the Hall, the larger space being too cold and too hole-y to heat. The outhouse was at the very back of that room and possibly the coldest place I've ever been in my life.)
So, yeah, I love New Year's Eve from the moment I get up in the morning until the moment I lay my head down and fall asleep that night. It's all good, except for the part where I was going to post a classic new year photo but have misplaced it. Better luck tomorrow, I expect!
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