2013

A clear night in Seattle, as is always the case.

I don't like New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. 

OK, I don't like it this year. Well, I am ambivalent about it, as I am with so many things. 

I did like it at one point in my life. When I was a kid, NYE was a raucous and enjoyable time, where I wasn't any longer feeling the loss of Christmas being over, and was not yet sad that school was about to resume again. While it still was intact, my family had a feast of child-friendly foods on NYE - pizza and Cokes, popcorn, Christmas cookies. We gathered in front of the tv to watch the ball drop. Then at the magic moment, we ran outside to bang as loudly as we could on pots with wooden spoons, or we would clash cymbals of mismatched lids; whooping and shouting, "Happy New Year!!" to our neighbors and their barking dogs. One year we even formed a parade - grown ups and children alike, marching around our little 8 house cul-de-sac. No coats; kids didn't need them and the adults had the warmth of inebriation to ward off the chill air.

When my family split from divorce, it was a holiday I would always leave my mom for, in order to spend time with my dad's side of the family. They were far more fun. That, and they existed. My mom's brother was killed while serving in Vietnam and she became an only child in 1968. In the years post-divorce (1978) she had entered into a pentecostal relationship with Jesus, and raising a toast to the new year paled in comparison to raising the roof at a worship service. So the charming Midwestern dysfunction of my dad, his three siblings and their families had a much more tangible entertainment value. It was sometimes overseen by the matriarch of the group, depending on whether she had a man to drive her, or if one of her kids were up to the task. Often the clan would gather at one of the two daughter's houses which were both an eight hour drive away from their brothers, who had never left their hometown.

There were only a few times I missed NYE with those relatives. I even took my fiance to the event, to make sure he could pass muster; which he did. However, things change. Upon the high school graduation of her kids, her own divorce ended one of my aunt's reign as hostess. And for myself, college graduation brought job obligations and a move away from the Midwest to Southern California. As the years went by, NYE was sometimes spent at parties, sometimes at friend's houses, sometimes on our own. But I learned something that hit me as a surprise...

My husband didn't like the "clanging of pots and pans" thing. It was ear splitting and sort of embarrassing, and he would humor me by standing patiently while I made some noise. But he didn't really want to participate. Totally within his right, silly him, I reasoned. When we had children, I showed them the proper way to ring/clang in the New Year. They liked it,  but it also hurt their ears. And in California we didn't have any extended family within 3,000 miles to help back me up, so one year, the pans never left the cupboard. Then I had another shock. Not only didn't my husband like to bang the pans, he preferred to celebrate the clock turning midnight from behind closed eyes, and didn't in fact, need to see fireworks to know that it had become January.

This was difficult for me to accept. There were years when I tried to get him to stay up, and it was not optimal. There were years when he tried to stay up for my sake, and it was still, not ideal. Nowadays I am humoring him when he says he's going to stay up late with me and the kids, because I know his heart is bigger that his sleep cycle. He will only get crankier as he fights the sleep, and a drink or two will only hasten process. I decide to it is best to ply him with wine into a state of relaxation, until he kisses everyone goodnight and slips into the cool dark of our bedroom. Then the kids and I do our thing until the magic hour, and head to bed ourselves. The only problem with our current scenario is that the kids won't be with me for much longer.  

This year in particular, as I see the pictures posted of so many families gathering cousins together and lifting glasses, I begin to feel alone. Not 'lonely' alone, just a sadness that my little family unit is so 'alone.' We have no cousins, no aunties nor uncles, no crazy grandparents to pepper our memories with saucy behavior, no gathering place for an extended family. We don't watch parades or football or have a special meal. We don't really have any sort of tradition other that going on a walk on New Year's Day. And I feel oddly bereft. I lost something I had once, and there is no way to replicate it. 

Hell, I don't even want to replicate the way things were exactly. As I got older and realized "charm" was the wrong description of the dysfunction of my dad's family, and living 3,000 miles away from them was actually just about right. Nonetheless, growing up, I thought my extended family would be a part of a support network for my own kids. I was wrong about that, and part of bereavement includes acceptance of your situation and moving on. 

How we celebrate NYE is not really the issue, is it, then. The root of the sadness is that we started our own family culture essentially from scratch. Like immigrants. We have family in the "old country." But we struck out for a different life. I hope I have done enough to give my kids a sense of place; and the roots of belonging and rest. Maybe someday I will be the eccentric matriarch, and they will return with their families to be silly and lift all our glasses to toast the promise of a new year.
 

Beautiful song about living in Seattle by The Lonely Forest