Auld Lang Syne.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.  

- Robert Burns

I understand why New Year’s Eve is about staying up late, drinking alcohol and kissing. Being a sweeper is a lot of pressure and in holiday time, six days is like six minutes. 

Something very different is needed for a successful climax in the final round of the holiday season.

Thanksgiving kicks it off, a food, family and festivity inspired frenzy that culminates a month later when bank accounts are weak, family dynamics are both warm and wired, and exhaustion guarantees that no creatures will be stirring. By the time the man in red drops down the chimney and every ham, goose and turkey has been cooked, everyone needs a long winter’s nap.

Which is why I haven’t made it to many ball drops. But I have remembered them all.

As a child we watched the ball drop thousands of miles away, racing into the dead of an Arctic night with sparklers as rifles rang as the ghostly white Aurora Borealis danced above. There was the high school friend’s unsanctioned party. There was the New Year’s Eve that I spent on a red eye from Phoenix to Toronto after a Def Leppard concert with my younger brother and the 24-hours in Buffalo at the tail end of college.

There was the New Year’s Eve when we ordered in sushi, watched “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and drank wine with abandon only to throw in the towel at 15 to midnight. There was the time we listened to the radio in the dark as Journey squeezed a little more life out of their career. There were the years he worked, telling me over the phone that he wished he was at home kissing me instead of ducking for cover as revelers fired into the air, letting bullets fall where they may. And then there was the one I don’t remember, the angry one that followed, and the lonely one after that.

365 days ago, I sat right here watching wishes of all the best float across the screen. And the poem that Robert Burns wrote so long ago stung.

Like everyone else, I made a vow. To work less and live more. To make our house a home again. To slow down and enjoy the moments in my children’s lives that will happen only once. To write more. To never forget who and what came before and to look ahead to who and what may lie ahead.

And when the ball drops tonight and we are surrounded by the merriment of friends as Auld Lang Syne floats through the air, I’ll vow to do it all over again.

Leavin' on a Jet Plane.

“You promise you’ll be back? Because I will miss you if you don’t come back and I don’t want to be sad again.”

She’s made me pinkie promise this before. In between packing sweaters and socks, panties and pants, tees and hair ties, we’ve wrestled with homework and talked about the best part of the day just as we always do. We’ve talked about behaving while I’m away and what treasures I’ll bring back.

As we packed and prepared, the house continued the warm soothing cadence of the normalcy we have found. But as the days dripped away and “soon” became “now,” we all wrestled with the anxiety that comes with opening this new door. There have been speed bumps along the smooth path of good behavior and teary moments that are less about why Draculaura can’t fit into Tinkerbell’s clothes and more about the unsettling of what has settled.

This was a vacation that was meant to happen before he disrupted the flight path and left us standing at the gate with extra baggage. A vacation we were to take as a family to a white, sandy beach and that is now my personal sabbatical halfway across the world where, in an ironic twist of fate, the verbal currency is the language of lovers.

We’ve never been apart for this long. Eight nights. Nine days. Tomorrow morning I will kiss their cheeks and remind them of all the ways that I love them and then I will leave on a trip I have counted down the days to. A trip meant to recharge and rejuvenate, ancient cobblestones and gothic cathedrals replacing the soothing lull of the waves. They will be fine and I will be fine, and the days will drip away until I am home again with treasures in hand and stories to hear. But perched on the toilet seat listening to her fears and “did you knows” as lavender bubbles float with her giggles in the steam I am already in the air.

Coming home.

Oh Snap.

Rich and full-bodied, with intense flavors of raspberry, plum and blackberry, balanced with oak character and a hint of toffee. A perfect wine to drink by itself or pair with barbecue, pizza or spicy foods. 

– Snap Dragon, California Red Wine 2008

On the travertine floor and granite countertop. The wood cabinetry, taupe walls, Swiss coffee baseboards, the stainless steel refrigerator and the ceiling. Mommy juice. As far as the eye can see.

Again.

I was really enjoying this bottle. Until now. Now, I am not enjoying this bottle. I am not enjoying being on my hands and knees racing to get ahead of the blood red stain that is oozing its way across the floor, pooling in my champagne-colored grout.

I have this little habit involving wine. Actually, it involves spilling wine. I have just spent a lot of money to have every floor in the house professionally cleaned to erase the impact of two young children and three dogs. And less than a month later, I am sopping and scrubbing furiously. And thinking of all of the times I have done this before.

Like when I momentarily fell asleep sitting on the couch. Or the broken glass at the bottom of the pool that he had to recover piece by piece.He once found a vintage bicycle wine rack tucked in the back corner of a store that was so hot and claustrophobic that I agreed to it only so that we could, like Elvis, leave the building. It settled into the awkward space between the top of the refrigerator and the cabinets and I settled into the idea that it was there.

Christmas Eve was officially ours, a peace offering for the two arms of family each wanting holiday time with the grandchildren. As much as we loved the holidays, we dreaded them. Family demands, budgets that did not stretch far enough and the pressures of work erupted in a candy cane-and-gingerbread-wrapped explosion of tempers and tears. The first holiday as a foursome was particularly difficult – he had just returned from a month-long trip for work and the annual flu had descended like the plague. To survive the preparations we split up, each taking a child and a task. Off went the boys, leaving me with my equally miserable 18-month-old daughter who did not want to be put down.

 

Not when I needed to finish frosting the cake. Not when the dishes needed to be cleaned up. Not when the cheeses needed slicing and arranging. And absolutely not when the back wheel of the wine rack come skittering off the top of the fridge, leaving one hand free to catch the bottle hurtling to the floor.

The white bottle, not the red.

I sometimes wonder what he thought when he walked through that door, my daughter screaming safely from the living room while I soaked up blood-red liquid and ragged green glass, tears from the fever and the frustration running down my face. The bottle had dropped so sharply that deep purple stains splattered across the milky color of the kitchen’s vaulted ceilings. A red watermark lingered in the porous tile for months. And here I am again, almost expecting to hear his voice.

Let me take care of that. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.

I look up at the fading spots as tears splash into the bloody pool below.

Changes to the Itinerary.

If he doesn’t stop talking I may need to hit the call button and summon the bottle-blonde flight attendant. So that I can talk to her about air sickness, stomach gas and things like that. Because at this point, it is the only thing that I can think of to make him stop.

Except that 10 minutes ago she was standing right here charging his card for two glasses of wine. Asking if his friend – me – is a “tax write off.”

If I hadn’t already been beaten down by a thunderstorm, 10 interviews and an unexpected series of glitches at the airport, I would have tossed a smart “I love that shade of red – but isn’t a bit young for you?” right back. But I am just too damn tired and the best revenge I can think of is to hit the call button over and over and over and over again for the remaining 45 minutes of this flight.

For as long as my children can remember, Mommy’s job has been a busy one. What she does, they aren’t quite sure but they know that it involves far too much time on a laptop, blackberry and airplanes. It has invaded our vacations and holidays, performances and games, sick days and story time. But we’ve recently had a nice vacation from the busy-ness of business so trading in flip flops for stilettos jarred all of us. They didn’t mind me going.

But they wanted me home by Friday.

Since my husband died I have missed and arrived late for everything, something no amount of hugs and kisses can fix. Which is why when the ticket agent smiled understandingly and said “that’s because your reservation is for tomorrow” when I tried to check in and couldn’t find my reservation, I gritted my teeth while he charged my card for a full-price, one-way ticket.  On an airline I don’t particularly like, on a flight arriving more than an hour later than I had promised, and requiring a change of planes in the middle. Which then was delayed for another hour … and a half.

He started before we even taxied down the runway. In the first hour, I heard all about the ex-wife and the current one, the good son and the ungrateful one he had tossed out. The companies he had worked for, his occasional foray into poetry and his love of wine. And then he said it.

“So, what happened to your ex?”

“Actually, I am a widow.”

Telling people you are a widow is not easy and I have found that it usually stops a conversation. Dead. No one knows what to say. Except today. And while he has talked, my body has been slowly and painfully filling up with air as the plane goes through varying levels of pressurization. In the past 36 hours I’ve been ogled, patted, soaked, air dried and verbally probed. And now I am inflating, which means that I will be painfully deflating at some point in the near future. Throwing the contents of the flimsy plastic glass back, I look up at the call button.

Excuse me, ma’am. This tax write-off needs a refill. With a side of Xanax and Beano.