Only an American would appreciate the simple beauty of those numbers! (We post dates beginning with the month. Poor souls elsewhere see this day as 31.12.23. Big deal, right?)
Ed and I have been lucky this year. Nothing tragic, no great calamity, no huge personal failures. True, Ed reminded me that I cycled through one surgery and more recently, in the space of two months -- two big time viruses, both of which had the power to kill the likes of me, but I retorted that in fact, neither killed me, nor hospitalized me, nor even wrecked my stamina, so let's not get hung up on the small stuff. And by the way, the reason both were in the end small is because I am fully vaccinated and both vaccines protected me from more serious outcomes that are so much a worry for people our age. So -- lucky.
I'm weighing whether luck warrants cracking open a (half) bottle of champagne tonight, or whether in fact that kind of toast is better saved for New Year's Day, to celebrate hope. I mean, why toast a year that's over and done with? And what senior person is going to want to pop a cork at midnight anyway? Two things to consider there: who wants to stay up that late and is it really good for your sleep to sip stuff just before bedtime?
Fifty years ago I would have attributed such deliberations to the VERY OLD. Oh! Perhaps that would include people my age! Gulp!
On the last day of the year, many of us like to reflect. Many, but not all. Looking back on a day -- I do that all the time! You could argue that Ocean is one ongoing look back. An answer to the pressing question of what just happened?? Looking back on a whole year, on the other hand, seems to invite judgment. Man oh man, that sucked! I should have seized the moment then! I wish I had tried this, done that, let go of the other! I prefer looking forward. It's not that I choose to forget the past: it lives within me every single day. But I do not catalogue events from the year or reflect on them on this day, only to be tossed aside thereafter. So, New Year's Eve is a sigh of relief, a grateful nod to having had so much luck in life, to be alive, to have felt the love of family and friends, and to give one big exhale before facing and bracing for the New Year.
In the meantime, we have a dusting of snow. A frustratingly small amount once again. True, I'm not up for skiing yet (that voice thing!), but I'd like to imagine that in a day or two I'll be in the forest with Ed, gliding along undisturbed snow. Not gonna happen. Not with this light stuff.
Breakfast? Still healthy. If I'm not moving a lot right now, I should at least eat well.
In the afternoon, I notice the quiet once again. No holiday music. No kids (during the day). No movies, shows, video clips. Ed and I both like quiet, and yet I'm wondering if I should return to my jazzy vocalists that were my go-to music favorites from a few years back. Classical in the car, jazzy at home. Not today though. Nothing really seems right. New Year's Eve demands something uniquely special, even as there is no New Year's playlist that truly belongs to this day. Picking up on an NPR recommendation (we need to move beyond just Auld Lang Syne!), I listen to Abba's New Year's Eve song. Meh...
I search for other possibilities.
In the end, my favorite hasn't New Year's in the lyrics but maybe it's there in the spirit? It's a recording of Kermit, performing at Lincoln Center this fall, along with the "choir" that is really the audience. Here it is:
And so long as we're on the Muppets, here's a more targeted message from Kermit:
And now it's time to get dinner ready. The young family is here for my traditional New Year's Eve seafood extravaganza.
(My daughter brings the party hats and noise makers which, luckily, aren't hugely noisy!)
The three little ones are ready to party party all evening long! The parents? Perhaps less so, but the kids are hitting that age range where staying up is going to happen, whether the parents go along or not, so may as well make it special.
Still, I shoo them out of the farmhouse way before the carriage turns to pumpkin. This is an example where being a grandparent has downsides (you get tired) and prerogatives (you dont have to stay up). I wave them off with hugs and hoots and happy cheers.
And once the house is in order, I sit down with Ed, for an oceanic celebration of the coming of the New Year. Meaning before our midnight, before even the east coast midnight, right when 2024 rolls around by the Atlantic Standard Time (so 10 p.m. our time), I take a sip of something fizzy and I wish him, and my near and farther afield family and friends and you too, Ocean readers -- a very, very happy New Year!
with so much love...
