We Meet Again, New Year

I’m always a little bit cautious about New Year’s Eve, due to a string of truly disastrous New Year’s Eves in the early ‘90’s. Seriously, unless you’ve had a New Year’s Eve that involved death or loss of limb, I’m fairly confident that one of the experiences I had between 1990-1995 can beat just about any crappy New Year’s story you’ve got. So I’m usually pretty content to just stay home and hope that nothing blows up (which is one problem I haven’t encountered…yet.) Anyway, John and I did in fact stay home last night and had a delightful evening. I made a bunch of appetizer-y dishes from the cookbooks I got for Christmas – tomatoes stuffed with risotto and baked, mashed potato croquettes, garlic crouton with carmelized onions and Camembert (the tastiest one) and French onion soup. It was all quite delicious and I had a lot of fun trying out so many new recipes. John built a fire in the fireplace for the first time, and we just hung out and enjoyed it.

Little did I know the New Year’s curse was just lulling me into a false sense of security, biding its time and waiting to strike. This is going to sound awful, but I’ve had a lot of family time over the last ten days, and I’ve about had it. We all need to go away and not talk to each other for a couple of weeks. (Except for you, Tim. You are a delight, of course. Even though you should be nicer to mom. But that’s a conversation for another day.) On our way down to see various family members today, John got pulled over for speeding and got a $280 ticket. $280!!! Sure, he was speeding. But $280? Happy fucking New Year. And then we got to John’s mom’s house, and while my niece and nephew are sweet and wonderful and I love them, today the baby was fussy and my nephew was very busy being almost three. He doesn’t want to sit in the chair. He doesn’t want to play with that toy. He doesn’t want a cookie. Oh, wait, yes he does. But he’s going to whine while he eats it. And shout and play the piano and push his aunt and swing his toy fishing pole around and whack poor Seamus in the head. I'm sure there are going to be days when my children act exactly like that, but today it was trying to be around.

And then we had to go have dinner with my dad. A dinner which he insisted on having before my brother goes back to school tomorrow. Now, we’d had my dad over for dinner on Christmas Eve, but he didn’t bring presents then. I knew this was a ploy to ensure that we’d hang out with him again while Tim was here. He doesn’t have to do shit like that, by the way, he just thinks he does. But anyway, John and I got to the restaurant at about 6:25, so maybe five minutes early. My brother showed up at 6:40. And at 6:45, we called my dad who was just leaving. I don’t know what it is with my family, but I’ve said it before to them, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: YOU DON’T LEAVE FOR A PLACE 15 MINUTES AFTER YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THERE!! God, that makes me crazy.

But not for real crazy. That designation is saved for my dad in this family, and unfortunately, it was crazy dad who showed up tonight. It just makes me so sad, because my dad so obviously wants to have a deeper connection to my brother and me and John too, but has no idea how to do it. And the problem is the crazy. He has all of these ideas he wants to share, but they don’t make sense and he can’t explain them. Because they are crazy or so steeped in symbolism that they only make sense to him. I love my dad and I want him to be happy, and of course I want to feel connected to him, but when he gets like this, he just makes me miserable. And then I imagine what it is like to be him, sitting there at the restaurant looking across the able at three sets of confused and slightly hostile eyes, and I feel guilty. But the stuff he’s talking about doesn’t make any sense. And I don’t think it ever will.

What a lousy first day of the New Year, particularly after such a promising beginning last night. Hopefully we’ve gotten all of the bad stuff out of the way right at the start of the year. Yes, that is how I’m going to look at it. The only other alternative is to take to my bed, and that would be letting the New Year win.