Another New Year’s Eve. Another invitation to think about goals, beginnings, resolutions. Another moment when many of us try to distance ourselves from the past, to escape what didn’t go as planned and lean toward an imagined future.
But this year, the past didn’t cooperate. It arrived uninvited. No easy escape. No clean line forward.
When I try to recall past New Year’s Eves, I’m struck by how few come with fondness or nostalgia. I question why. My life has not been especially difficult. I was raised by solid, lower-middle-class parents who believed deeply in Christian values and tried to live them. I was encouraged to play sports, to study music, to read and write, to get an education because my parents hadn’t had that chance. They expected me to do what was right, not because it was easy, but because it mattered. They were shaped by the beliefs and blind spots of their time, as we all are, but they worked earnestly toward their version of goodness.
Perhaps I told myself a simpler story than the truth.
I have hazy memories. Fireworks from a sidewalk. Dick Clark on television. Parents asleep by ten. A curfew in high school. A boyfriend who left for after-parties once I had to be home. Marriage. Small children. Did we celebrate together? I don’t know. I can’t remember.
One night stands out. I was in my mid-thirties, before Kristy died. We bought fireworks, drove to her house, sat on the back of her dad’s truck, and took turns lighting them in the street. The boys were young. Happy. I don’t remember what we talked about. Knowing us, it was men, sports, school. What stays is the feeling. That the night happened. That she was my friend. That I was hers.
At that point in my life, I was working myself thin. Teaching high school math for little pay. Sponsoring student council without compensation. Saying yes too often. Carrying institutional weight because I could. Because I didn’t yet know how to say no. I marvel now at the energy I had then. I would protect it fiercely today.
Other years blur together. Relationships where anxiety outweighed joy. Nights marked more by worry than celebration. After loss, there were years of escape. Then marriage again. Then sourness. Then distance. Okinawa brought friendship and laughter and a sense of shared life, though even those memories feel dreamlike. Later still, New Year’s Eves with my children and grandchildren. Those were the best. In those moments, I felt settled. And still, I failed to hold on to the details.
I wish I had catalogued more. Conversations. Exact words. Instead, I retained only the feeling. But those feelings do matter.
Perhaps this night has always been less about the calendar and more about me. It has taken me nearly sixty years to truly inhabit this skin and almost like the person living in it. Many people would never guess at the struggle. I learned early how to deflect, smile, redirect. I came to Italy with hope. I’ve had beautiful experiences here. I’ve also been tested in ways that dimmed that hope and fractured something in me. There was darkness. A period when I didn’t recognize myself.
I still don’t fully recognize the face or body I see now, but I like her. The feeling this New Year’s Eve is unresolved. Still forming.
Maybe it’s freedom.
Maybe acceptance.
Curiosity, certainly.
And yes, still a little hope.
Is Anyone out there listening? 