Farewell 2007

The time has come, the end is fast approaching when we can count 2007 as the present. This day is a strange mix of melancholy, wistfulness, and a sense of anticipation. It is a holiday that I have never really understood. Perhaps, my views are colored by the fact that once the clock strikes at midnight, it also becomes the day I become a year older--A New Year's Baby. I've always lamented my birthday coinciding with such an occasion, synonymous with champagne and a crystal ball dropping. The years I've received combined birthday and Christmas gifts is enough to make one wish for a birthday that coincides with the day of the Black Plague's devastation around the world. I know I will surely receive calls from friends, it is a very easy birthday to remember, their voices hoarse from the previous night's festivities. Aside from the birthday issue, this holiday is one that makes me feel wistful more than anything else. Even the song we're supposed to cap off the occasion singing is a bit maudlin, if you really listen to the lyrics. It is one of those songs that makes me feel teary, no matter, where, or how badly it's being sung.

This year, no different than any other, is again a bit wistful. However, this emotion is not nearly as strong or overpowering as in year's past when this event was marked three hours behind the rest of my family's, and I would awaken to a sun-filled day where floats of flowers and other edible items would parade down Colorado Boulevard. But like years past, it is a time to reflect, to mourn the people or places now far away, and a time to reassess for the upcoming year. This need for everyone to take a moment and to think long and hard, unless you're out at Times Square with all the people who probably frequent cruise ships, is something that should occur daily, but for some cultural reason is only encouraged once a year.

This year we will, including my gourmand son, be heading to Bolo for an early dinner. This request, unfortunately, came from our five year old and not one of the adults. I try not to imagine how much more obnoxiously precocious he will be in a few years time after living here as a New York City kid. I dare not try to picture him wearing Ascots to events, but one never knows when you have an only child. My son has requested we cap off the evening with a rousing Family Dance Night. Yes, we are a strange lot, but hopefully all this exposure to good music will prevent him from listening to any artist coming off of the Disney Channel.

New Year's Resolutions will abound as each news report and the food channel will devote whole segments or shows to healthy eating and losing weight--the new cultural obsession for all Americans. We will not think about the significance of a woman killed halfway around the world where the new year will surely bring about more calamity, the rumble of it just barely audible in the din at Times Square. The passing of such literary giants as Norman Mailer will be reflected upon the pages of Time Magazine as they list those who have left our world during the year of 2007.

I try and not think too hard about all that awaits, personally and professionally, in the upcoming year. I have a massive load of pages to revise, a child to get into a New York City private school, and a permanent home to find. As one ages, our grandeur for our lives take on a more realistic shape, one becoming more philosophical about change, some of it unwelcome. There is just the tiniest hint of apprehension with the anticipation. One hopes family, particularly your aging parents, are healthy, that friends will remain married, their children unmarred by fate that can make God and life seem unbelievably cruel, that your own marriage will continue to grow and change as your bodies do the same, and that it will all end on December 31st much as it had in years past--wistful, melancholy, and anticipatory. Amen for just such a year, indeed.