A Year and a Word

For a long time New Year's Eve felt like an empty holiday to me.  So much of its sparkle and glamour is borrowed from the leftovers of Christmas, like some hand-me-down of a once-fabulous party dress that's been worn a few too many times.  Of course I understood the symbolism of the holiday; I got the idea of starting fresh. Resolutions are important, even if we abandon them a few weeks later when the three-layer chocolate & raspberry cake is hauled out on a bier at some cousin's birthday party. The thought that we can make serious changes for the better in our lives is profound, indeed, but I've always felt like I make such changes better in a quiet way, without the hoopla.  After all, every day is the eve of a new year, if we choose to make it so.   

When I was a girl, my parents and their friends took turns hosting New Year's parties, complete with canapes, streamers, and champagne.  We kids would be shooed upstairs to play Twister and drink punch with Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve blaring on an old TV in the background.  Periodically throughout the night, we'd sneak downstairs to restock our supply of chips and onion dip.  I remember running back up the grand staircase in the elegant old sea captain's home of some friends, cupping a napkinful of cheese cubes in my hands.  Glancing down into the living room, I suddenly felt positively tipsy from the laughter of the grown ups, the pipe tobacco of the men, and the flashing costume jewelry of the women.  The whole world was a film reel that had been speeded up, clicking faster and faster, and so I ran as quickly as I could to keep up with it, rushing headlong into the next year, making myself stay up all the way until midnight to see the great glittering ball drop on TV and all those people in Times Square hugging and kissing and singing "Auld Lang Syne."

Around me at the party the other kids who had managed to stay awake were watching the ball, too.  We didn't hug and kiss.  It was a strangely passive moment watching other people celebrate in a city far away, accompanied by the sound of our parents' cheers drifting up the stairs.  What exactly were they celebrating, I wondered?  Before I could even begin to answer that question for myself, we were bundling into our heavy coats and hats and scarves and gloves, and heading back out into the crisp, cold night.  The rest is a blur until morning, when I awoke with the knowledge that I had stayed up later than ever before.  Not much else had changed.  I was too young to make resolutions, because I didn't have any truly bad habits yet (little did I know that those would come soon enough), and the only thing different was that I would have to start training myself to write 1975 instead of 1974 on papers and quizzes at school.

All that noise and cheer had felt a little bit hollow to me.  Years later, when I was old enough to drink champagne, it felt even more hollow--fun, but hollow.  New Year's possessed none of the delicious fright of Halloween, none of the romance of Valentine's Day, no stirs of the patriotism I felt on July Fourth, and definitely none of the joy I felt at Christmas--that one holiday that can make even a small child wax nostalgic.

My cold regard for the holiday was reinforced when I was a teenager and my father died a few days into a new year. Nearly two decades later, my grandfather died on that very same day.  Last year, on the 26th anniversary of my father's passing, I received news that turned 2010 into one of the most difficult years of my life.  Honestly, I've come to dread January.  And yet . . . there is a part of me that is happy to mark another year alive and the chance to make the coming year a better one.

Each New Year, several of my friends choose a word for the year that lies ahead.  I've never done this before, but I've decided that I want to this year.  I thought the word would just come to me, maybe just fly in through a crack in the window frame or land softly on my head like a snowflake when I was out walking.  No such luck.  I've had to really think on this.  After much searching, I've found my word: grace.  Now that it's here with me, it feels like a perfect fit.

Here's to the new year, to health, to peace, and to grace.