Goodbye Until Tomorrow
This was an amazing year.
I’m having a hard time believing I’m sitting here again already, already working on my new content to release at Vault 713 at midnight, already marking dates on my calendar that end in 2012 instead of 2011. I feel like I was only moving into this apartment yesterday, when really it was over a year ago. Has it really, really been a year?
The funny thing about New Years Eve for me is that I never think about it the other 360-something days of the year. I only think about it on New Years Eve, and suddenly all of the memories roll into one. My brain becomes a mush of years spent waking my dad up in the middle of the night to say “Happy New Year, can you upload this code for me so I can put it on the website?” and eating my weight in Junior Mints and the years like last year, where some of the folks from the very website I was maintaining got together in my apartment to do a live-broadcasted New Year’s Eve party.
But one year was different.
One year my mom had heard from a friend that sometimes people went to the Wright Memorial for New Year’s Eve. Some people shot off fireworks all around the beach, and it’s a well known fact that the Wright Memorial was one of the few places you could see both the ocean and the sound at the same time if you tried. She said that some people went up there to see the fireworks all over instead of just one fireworks display. It sounded like a cool idea, and my dad never stayed up for midnight, so it seemed fun.
It was freezing cold. In retrospect, it was probably only in the 40s. That doesn’t seem cold to me after a year in Wisconsin, after a year of snow and ice and letting your car warm up before you get in. At the time, 40 was a death wish. We were bundled up, flashlights in hand as we pulled around to the back entrance of the memorial, where the airport was.
You weren’t really supposed to be there at night, I’m sure, but people did it all the time. People went there to jog and run even if they weren’t going to actually “see” the memorial. So we parked our car amongst the 2 or three others and made our way to the top.
So there we sat. My mom, my dad, myself, in the cold. Before cell phones had the internet on them and before Twitter and before people felt like they always had a place to be. I had a place to be, I’m sure; I vaguely remember wanting to go home and get online, but this was special. It wasn’t to be toyed with. There were maybe a dozen other people there, all spread out. Lovers snuggled together for warmth, maybe another family. There were only a few of us.
It was just darkness and seeing your breath in the glow of the lights that illuminated the memorial to man’s first prolonged flight. It was peaceful.
Midnight came and went without alarm – the fireworks started at random intervals and our watches beeped to tell us it was finally the new year. Some people had brought champagne or beer or wine or cider for themselves and opened it to drink.
We sat in the dark and let the New Year come like New Years have been coming for centuries – quietly and unsuspecting in the middle of the night, just a whisper to tell you what lies ahead.
I’m getting older, now. The years are moving faster. I found myself talking about how to store our Christmas wrapping supplies for next year, because it already seems so close. Quietly and unsuspecting, somehow the world has sped up around me, with no sign of slowing down. This is it. Life is happening.
This past year was amazing. More than I could have asked for. I could only hope the same for the next, and the next, and the dozen after that.
We are all going to accomplish great things. From the small to the large, the noteworthy to the quiet and unsuspecting. I welcome the challenge.
I’ve been listening to a lot of musicals lately. They make me feel like home. In particular, a tiny, unsuspecting Off-Broadway production by the name of The Last Five Years. The finale seems all but too appropriate for how I feel tonight, going into this thing head on and arms open for 2012:
So goodbye until tomorrow, goodbye until the rest of my life,
I have been waiting, I have been waiting for you.
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