Consider This

By LC Van Savage

Well, here comes my thirteenth New Year’s Eve column, this one on the eve of my 68th birthday. Mongo and I truly dislike New Year’s Eve parties, so even when invited, (and those invites are coming less and less often---must be all our friends get the flu around this time of year or something) we always turn them down. Those parties can be fun, but we’re not heavy drinkers and all that waiting around for midnight to give embarrassing, sometimes slobbery, sometimes air kisses makes me very nervous. I actually don’t drink at all, although for 2006 I’ve resolved to learn to love wine and have gotten so far as tolerating girlie-girlie, juicy wines a little. Especially if there’s fruit on the label.

So we stay home on New Year’s Eves. Mongo usually beds down around 11 as always, and I stay up and write my annual column and try to watch that ball fall.

I likely won’t see it however, because this year I broke my last year’s resolution to never say the words “Thanksgiving” or “Christmas” after June 1st. I did the latter and got nailed and everyone came here the day after 12/25, and frankly, I’m tired and don’t think I’ll make it to midnight to see that big shiny ball sliding down into 2006.

The gang arrived in waves and it was the most din-filled, wild, fun, intense, roaring and fabulous Christmas ever. Kids, dogs and really loud, hungry adults. I truly enjoyed it although all our wee bairn aren’t so wee anymore and they now wreck the house a lot, careening and ricocheting off of absolutely everything we own. I’m discovering lots of hairline fractures everywhere. Sending them out to play in 14 degree weather might be considered child abuse, so we didn’t.

And so I’m sitting and staring at the wreckage we used to call our home and I wonder why we did it. Isn’t it time Mongo and I in our retirement dotage started to freeload off our kids a little? Should we not be visiting our beloved grandchildren instead of cramming them all into our small home? Is it not time to call in our markers and be given the royal geezer treatment? Yeah. Eighteen people with three birthdays to celebrate can be exhausting. #3 son Paul, born Christmas day, #1 son Erick born 12/28, and their beloved mother, that’d be moi, born January lst. Mongo was born 3 weeks before Christmas, #2 son Mark born near Easter. What was with me and my penchant for birthing holiday progeny? Well, it sure got me out of packing up and putting away decorations.

So here I sit on the eve of my 68th, not thrilled to be so near 70, but glad I’m here. It was a great year, was ’05. Meeting new friends, TV show up and running, radio show going well, good writing gigs, great family vacation, our kids remaining our best friends, Mongo staying around, and of course, we get to keep on living in Maine.

But tonight I’m wiped out. The 18 have all left and my exhale as they finally drove away was embarrassingly loud this time. I know it’ll take a month to pull the house back to normal and we’ll be finding their residuum for weeks.

I’ll never make it to the falling ball tonight; my 67 nearly 68-year-old eyelids are heavy.

I dread having to blast through the mess tomorrow. Everything’s grubby. Everything’s broken. Everything’s sticky. Nothing works. I can’t find my stuff. My pillow is missing. So’s one of our phones. That group of 18 trashed the joint and emptied our larders. I have to tunnel through the laundry. My weekly to-do list was cut up with pinking shears. Hey, I’m gettin’ too old for this. I’m not feeling especially grateful for anything tonight.

Except for, oh yeah, everything. And especially that 18.