One Word New Year's Eve

One Word New Year’s Eve

2013

We spent our post-Christmas days in the purportedly, but not always, sunny Miami Beach.  Three of our four children were with us. The fourth, Cheryl, had departed the same day we did, for a 13 hour drive to NOLA, with her fiancé. Their wedding fast approaching, I’m certain they had their own resolutions to contend with, as the new year set in.

The night before we all abandoned the dog to spend with his “girlfriends” down the street, the rush of Christmas had caught up to me. Our children had been spending time together shopping, eating, watching movies, playing XBox. And somehow we were left out. 

Not in a sad way. But in a realization that their relationships with each other were now equally as important as their relationships with us. And the boy, Davis, without having flown the nest, found comfort in someone else being the object of attention, though we might argue “affection.”

Miami Beach brought about sullen weather, but didn’t dampen our spirits. We were energized by the town, the water waves roiling, the Art Deco hotels, the shoes. Oh, the dazzling, platform shoes.

While we encouraged the kids to go off on their own, we spent most of our time together, whether poolside under towels as the skies sprinkled droplets on our chairs, walking on a rainy day down Collins Avenue pockmarked with construction, or our twice in one day 16 block walk and two-hour wait for Joe’s Stone Crab. Dare I say, the key lime pie was a match for the stone crabs.

Our conversations were mostly catch ups on the day’s news, sporting events, and minor details of the children’s lives. But they also included questions such as, “Where are you finding spirituality in your life these days?”  And that’s with only one of the children of age to drink.

Another question that came up one night at dinner on New Year’s Eve was related to focus. We, like everyone else, shy away from resolutions. It is too hard to find failure in that word. Focus is a more active word that one can recover quickly.  So, we went around the table and shared areas in our life that we felt needed focus or attention. In Mark’s case, it was his attention itself that needed attention. 

I sat back and considered the depths of the questions and answers. I can’t divulge them. They were privately shared, and they will stay privately realized.

But the final question from Shannon was, “What is your one-word prayer for the year?”  This seemed to echo the previous question, but it was in essence boiling it down to where the acting it out was palatable.

Everyone but me offered his or her one word.

I don’t know why I couldn’t provide an answer. There was so much ahead of us in the year – marriages, graduations, our transition downtown, children moving around the planet like pieces on a chess board, and last, my mother’s condition.

I still had one more day to think about the word, when Shannon offered we could change our answer to three words.  Well, that just confounded me even more. I was working hard on relaxing, and encouraging the sun to come out. That seemed about enough of a prayer for me for the time.

But on the plane ride home, I was recalling our New Year’s Eve dinner. It was a fabulous meal, the pesto gnocchi, porcini pappardelle, ricotta torte.  However, the meal and I did not agree later on its proper digestive technique and I spent New Year’ Eve in the bathroom, the boom from the fireworks my family was viewing rocketing in my ears at midnight. It was memorable in a way.

But upon their return, they insisted that we would pop the champagne the next night to celebrate with me. And thus we did, albeit a shorter ceremony, on the beach, where I believe the champagne might have been chugged, to get it over with, so they could spent their last night of vacation away from parents.

The week of Christmas and the past week in Miami were now in the rearview mirror. And I, the writer, had yet to articulate the word that would encompass the upcoming year, in prayer-like fashion. It was perhaps because I am the writer that I was seeking the right word from my muse, who apparently I had left behind in Miami after the sun rejoined the shore.

In our blended family, our children now have blended memories. They will boast about the camel ride in Senegal, laugh at Uncle Kevin’s stories about the nieces and nephews they once babysat, relive the dreaded march back to Joe’s one windy day in Miami Beach and fall over at the endless water supply at Lure.

I think about how their lives would have turned out, before each other, without each other.  How they have propelled their interrupted lives, into lives worth living.  I am amazed how each of them have come through their own storms, a little banged up, a little more sure of where they are going.  And I am heartened how they are learning to rely on each other to pull them through when they are stuck.

And the only word that comes to mind is grace.