I usually don't let people know this about me, as it might affect their appreciation of certain moments in our shared lives, but there it is. The drinking, paper horns, and butchering of Auld Lang Syne are all celebratory of a moment that feels oddly similar to closing a coffin lid for the last time at a long funeral. You're glad the process is over, but there's a bittersweet moment where the passage of time hurts more than you'd like to admit and all you want to do is fall out of reality and never let anything pass from your life ever again.
In spite all that morbid heaviness, I celebrate every year with all the expected pomp and circumstance. I happily don pointy hats, count backwards from ten with unmatched revelry, and occasionally pop champagne party poppers at the night sky to remind the universe that no happy moment deserves to pass silently. In my head, it sounds a bit like this video.
Here's to you little, wonderful reminders of existential defiance.
As 2013 winds down, I'll watch as my little family busily readies themselves to yell at the television, bashfully kiss cheeks, and bellow out "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" to the entire block, whether the block cares that we're celebrating or not. In between all the fun, I'll also catch myself thinking back to a few other New Year's Eves and try to recover them from the oblivion of the past by dusting them off and rearranging them on the shelf of my mind.
When I was little, New Year's Eve was always spent with my family, much in the same way that my daughters spend theirs with me. On New Year's Eve on 1989, I set up a pathetic little refreshment table for my family of three to enjoy as we celebrated the moment. My brother, who had just turned 16 a few weeks earlier, was out and about with his car and overdue to return home.
I used my mother's brown glass dishware to set the festive mood. Nothing says the party is about to be a thrilling, rip-roaring affair like orange-brown glass tea cups. In fact, nearly every other kid I knew had a set of these dishes somewhere in the house, incomplete and almost unusable because of their fragility and almost certainly toxic level of glass tinting.
Aww yisssss. It just got real. It's party time!
I remember anxiously waiting for his arrival, along with a group of his friends. When they finally pulled into the driveway like a rough gust of wind, I had long since abandoned my post at the spread. The ungrateful teenagers didn't even care to notice my elaborate snack table as they walked to to the kitchen to procure nacho cheese chips and soda. Knowing that my brother would soon graduate and move on to his own life, I realized that night that New Year's Eve, in addition to celebrating new beginnings, also sadly commemorated the inevitable passage of time. My little family, much like the universe itself, was in constant motion outwards away from its center.
Several more years passed in which New Year's Eves were passed by yelling at the television, at chaperoned church lock-ins, or underwhelming get togethers where I had no particular quarry to catch by midnight. Going to college had yet to deliver a truly memorable New Year's Eve until 1999. The mass hysteria surrounding Y2K had driven people underground or into disarray at the terrifying anticipation of the moment when the twentieth century and human civilization might have passed into history, permanently.
Having absolutely no plans, I found myself tagging along with a friend to his half-sister's house on the outskirts of tiny Harrah, OK. I wasn't yet 21 and I hadn't really ever been three sheets to the wind drunk before, but it seemed like that night would be as good as any to test my limits. No one knew me, save my friend, and he was drinking as fast as I was. With the courage of anonymity and a total lack of shame, we poured the better hours of the night into glasses and down our throats.
Finally, the long-awaited moment of truth neared. I could barely stand without wobbling, but everyone got up from their seats, gathered their glasses for the toast, and as usual, started yelling at the television. As soon as midnight hit, one comedic genius in attendance flipped the circuit breakers in a back room, sending the house into total darkness.
In hindsight, that practical joke was a stroke of genius. At the moment, a room full of drunken twenty-somethings was suddenly plunged into a pitch black swirl of confusion. Bodies fell over bodies. Glass flutes dropped to the floor with shattering reports. A full-figured woman with big Aqua Net hair and a neon green blouse fell onto me and pinned me on the sofa, while another person fell back onto her. Madness descended and just for a moment, I thought the world was ending. I wondered if anyone would tell my mom that I had died heroically and not as collateral damage underneath the suffocating bulk of a back page model from the 1988 Lane Bryant clothing catalog.
I didn't die, thankfully. Power was restored quickly, bits of glass were picked up, and I ended up throwing up my night into a hedge on the backside of the house. New Year's Eve, despite my best efforts, had yet to be anything but an exercise in awkwardness. Every year, it's the same thing: trying to muster up excitement for midnight in the Central time zone when I had just watched a much bigger and better moment an hour earlier in Times Square, hosted by Zombie Dick Clark.
R.I.P., America's Oldest Teenager.
Better New Year's Eves were to come in future years, as I formed my own little family. We built gingerbread houses, blew paper horns, and yelled at the television at the duly appointed time. Yet, every succeeding year took on the same final, funereal quality. Another year gone by in which I missed a few opportunities, met a few new people, and kept moving closer towards death. Another year that will not seem that far in the past when future generations marvel at the fact that I was alive and aware of my surroundings in 1989.
I suppose I'll never really get the hang of New Year's Eve. I'm probably far too introspective and hypersensitive to let the moment pass any way but mournfully. I hate saying goodbye and I hate it even more when I see glittering, brightly lit reminders that time is marching forward without ceasing. I'm still holding out hope, though. Maybe this year will be different. Maybe not.
As 2013 passes into memory, we'll all probably spend the last few seconds like most Americans do: counting backwards from ten while yelling at the television. We'll mark off another year and another trip around the sun. Some people will be very proud of the year they've had and others will be glad such a long, difficult year is in the rear-view mirror.
In a moment like this, where the passage of time is beheld with more anticipation and reverence than at almost any other time, I'm reminded of one of my favorites lines from one of my favorite novels. In The Sound and the Fury, when given his grandfather's watch, Quentin's father tells him that "I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it." Time catches us all in the end, even if we break the hands off the clock like the ill-fated Quentin Compson tried to do. There will be a New Year's Eve in the future that passes with one less familiar voice yelling at the television. This will continue on until all of tonight's festive voices eventually fall forever silent and a wholly new throng of voices are yelling happily in their place.
Perhaps this year will be different, though. Perhaps this year we could surrender more of our precious minutes in an effort to forget about time. Perhaps by falling out of time's endlessly clicking, mechanical grasp for a moment, we could stop trying to conquer the unconquerable. Perhaps, instead of yelling at the television, we could relish the unmeasured spaces without worry and yell joyously into the face of the indifferent universe that we not only lived, but lived well.
It's a nice thought, anyway. Happy New Year, everyone! Don't drive drunk if you've been drinking.
As 2013 passes into memory, we'll all probably spend the last few seconds like most Americans do: counting backwards from ten while yelling at the television. We'll mark off another year and another trip around the sun. Some people will be very proud of the year they've had and others will be glad such a long, difficult year is in the rear-view mirror.
In a moment like this, where the passage of time is beheld with more anticipation and reverence than at almost any other time, I'm reminded of one of my favorites lines from one of my favorite novels. In The Sound and the Fury, when given his grandfather's watch, Quentin's father tells him that "I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it." Time catches us all in the end, even if we break the hands off the clock like the ill-fated Quentin Compson tried to do. There will be a New Year's Eve in the future that passes with one less familiar voice yelling at the television. This will continue on until all of tonight's festive voices eventually fall forever silent and a wholly new throng of voices are yelling happily in their place.
Perhaps this year will be different, though. Perhaps this year we could surrender more of our precious minutes in an effort to forget about time. Perhaps by falling out of time's endlessly clicking, mechanical grasp for a moment, we could stop trying to conquer the unconquerable. Perhaps, instead of yelling at the television, we could relish the unmeasured spaces without worry and yell joyously into the face of the indifferent universe that we not only lived, but lived well.
It's a nice thought, anyway. Happy New Year, everyone! Don't drive drunk if you've been drinking.
I loved this! Thank you for sharing!
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