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.
If Only In My Dreams
I love Christmas music. I always have. Other people get sick of it or hate the songs, but I just love them. I love how each song makes me think of Christmases past, of all the good happy times that come with the holiday season.
This year, though, every time I’ve heard “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” I’ve been in tears.
Last year was my first ever – and I mean ever, in the then-almost-23 years I’d been alive – that I spent Christmas away from my parents. I have older (technically half) siblings, but they’ve lived on their own or with their mom for most of my life, so it’s always just been us. Me, my mom, my dad, whatever pets we had running around. For years that meant Sweet Pea the Beagle and Turbo the Jack Russell. Then one Christmas it became just us and Sweet Pea and a tin of Turbo’s ashes from where we’d had her creamated. Then just us and two tins. But it was always us, and we always made the best of whatever we had.
Some years there weren’t a lot of presents. One year my mom got an ipod, and I got squat. At least, I got a few things I know I loved, but I remembered being jealous that she got something “cool” from my dad and I didn’t. Other years we got tons of fun stuff – mom and dad too, not just me – one memorable year I got my very own copy of the United Methodist Hymnal, engraved with my name. Those don’t come cheap.
My parents hated putting up the tree, but they always did it anyway. Sometimes it took us until a few days before Christmas to get it up, but we always got one up. It used to be real, then gradually we moved to using the fake tree. One year the fake tree was two feet tall.
We always went to church on Christmas Eve. Always. My parents worked a lot on weekends, so we didn’t always make it to Sunday services, but we always made it to church for the candlelight service. I loved every bit of the Christmas service – from the time I was a kid, wiggling in my seat and ready to get to the end of the service so I could get my treat bag with stickers and oranges, until my time as an adult and looked forward to lighting the candles and looking around at everyone’s faces as we sang silent night. It didn’t matter how stressful the rest of the day is or how much we had all been fighting or arguing on the way to church, or if we were driving nearly an hour to get to the church “over the bridge” or just walking down the street to the tiny church by the tiny school. It was perfect.
Last year was my first time away from all that.
I had been dreading it at the time; Thanksgiving had been enjoyable for me, but stressful. Everyone’s family does things differently, even if it’s something as simple as a holiday, we all have different traditions. Last year I had none of mine for Thanksgiving, and was determined to make the best of it for Christmas.
Nick doesn’t really like going to church – at least that was the impression I’d gotten from him on several occasions, but I wanted to go, so we went. I’d never been to the church before, but it was like being right back where I belonged; with the candles and the hymns, only this time the snow was falling softly outside as we walked out afterwards to head to his mom’s for dinner. The next morning I called my parents on Skype, and we opened our presents that we’d mailed each other over webcam. It was just like being home. We took turns opening one at a time, laughed at the tags we’d made for each other (“To: The Kid, From: Turbo & Sweet Pea”), pointed out which ones we should open first or last or wait-until-you-open-that-other-one. I got to watch my cat climb into the wrapping paper and play with the bows that had fallen out of the presents.
This year will be – I hope – just as wonderful. I’m not dreading Christmas anymore, I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait to call my parents again on Skype and tell them which gifts to open first. For Thanksgiving I baked my mom’s Sweet Potato Biscuits; and for Christmas I’ll be making my Grandmother’s Cheese Braids like I did last year. We’ll be trying a different church this year, but you can bet I’ll be there to light the candles and sing “Silent Night” and watch the children impatiently wait for everything to end so they can hurry home for Santa.
I miss home. I miss the sound of the ocean, I miss going to the Christmas service without having to wear a jacket. I miss arguing with my mom about whether or not we need to put up a Christmas tree. I miss waking my parents up at 6 AM to open presents, even when I was way too old to be doing it. I miss drinking my mom’s spiced tea and waiting for my dad to get his coffee and check his email before we could do anything.
But I love the look of the snow falling outside. I love my boyfriend’s family and their traditions, I love getting to open presents on Christmas Eve with his mom and actually having a reason to want to drink hot cocoa or cider.
Christmas is still Christmas – it doesn’t matter where you are. I get the whole “home is where the heart is” thing now – sure, I’m on the complete other side of the country from my family, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still spend the holidays together.
I guess I’ll be “home for Christmas” after all, and at the end of the day, that’s not so bad.
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