New Year's Eve

I have never found New Year’s Eve to be a particularly memorable holiday, but there is one New Year’s Eve celebration with Emma that I remember vividly. If I were at home, I’d dig through our photos to find a picture of the celebration that I am thinking of. But I don’t really need it. The image that would be reflected in the photo is etched clearly in my mind.

Emma is 3. She is wearing her favorite hand-me-down flannel nightgown. It is white with light blue flowers sprinkled over it. It has three buttons at the neck and a ruffle across the chest and bottom. The elastic cuffs also end in a ruffle, accentuating those precious little cookie hands. Emma’s hair still has the fine, soft quality of baby hair. It is just about shoulder length and still has the baby curl that some told me would disappear the first time I cut it. She has bangs which draw your eyes to her pretty blue ones that match the flowers on her nightgown. The photo is taken minutes before we will celebrate the New Year and her face is full of anticipation and excitement. She looks wide awake, which is the first clue that this is not your standard midnight celebration of the New Year.

We were staying with Peter’s parents, as were Peter’s sister, her husband and their two kids. I believe it was my bright idea to stage a kids' celebration of the New Year at 8 pm. I thought that if we played it right they would feel satisfied that they had had the New Year’s Eve experience and would be content to go off to bed. We spent the day preparing for the celebration with Emma and her two cousins. We made a trip to the grocery store to buy sparkling cider for the New Year’s toast. We decorated paper plates and stapled two together, filling the center with dried beans to make noisemakers. We made hats out of construction paper that we had decorated generously. After dinner the kids got bathed and donned their pajamas and nightgowns.  As 8 pm approached, we popped open the cider and filled the glasses, donned our paper hats and grabbed our noisemakers. Then the countdown began. Ten, nine, eight – the feeling of excitement was palpable. Seven, six, five – the kids eyes were darting around the room, trying to capture every aspect of the excitement that would be unleashed in just a few more seconds. Four, three, two, one – Happy New Year!!!

We shook our noisemakers wildly, smooched our loved ones, and drank our cider. Then came the comment from my 7 year old niece which accurately describes the feeling I have had at exactly 12:05 am every New Year’s eve that I have bothered to stay up. “Was that it?” she said. "Somehow I thought it would be more exciting."