happy new year

Midnight came and went quietly this year. My family was already sound asleep. Got a couple pre-new year emails and sent out maybe 50 well-wishes between home and work -- I can hear fireworks in the distance, and I wonder how many of my friends are awake like I am: some watching TV, some laying in the darkness listening to distant noises, some surfing the Net, reflecting on that New Year's tendency to think we should all be connecting somehow. I went into the bedrooms and kissed the sleeping heads of my loved ones. I ate some Sara Lee poundcake. I drank some VitaWater. It's now 00:26, on a Tuesday, the first day of 2008.

Out there, emergency room doctors and nurses are mid-shift, and maybe the internist next door is on the job tonight -- I could check and see if his car is outside. We call him "Skeeziks" because we don't know his name -- he seldom converses. And he tends to park right in front of our plowed walkways.
Out there, cops are getting into high gear, watching the roads for weaving cars, wrong-way drivers and illegal left turns; pens to their DUI pads. On the news later today we'll find out if anyone got shot on the first day of the year, and they'll show new babies from the local hospitals -- the first baby born in the new year, probably named Aiden or Sophia.
Out there, bartenders are counting the minutes.
Janitors are wishing themselves Happy New Year with a cup of coffee and a doughnut.
Security guards are staring at banks of television monitors, watching a digital clock tick off the new minutes.
New Year's TV specials are wrapping up. The writers are still on strike in Hollywood.
People are praying.
People are crying.
People are hugging and kissing, making phone calls, having sex, turning pages in a book.
People are sitting alone thinking about other people, and wondering what that means.

People are drinking, which I did a little bit of earlier tonight but it didn't seem terribly agreeable.
I am getting old. This year I will turn 40. Most of my friends are also getting older, and staying at home more often than not on nights like these.

My twenties went by in an instant. My thirties have lasted a long while. I have been married throughout the past decade. Married. No one thought it would last -- no one who knew me well before. They thought I wasn't the marrying kind -- and I'm not, I suppose, not a good homebody either, but it's what I wanted, what I still want. Ditto motherhood. I belong to them now, for better or worse as they say, and I'm still finding out what that means. I have about nine months left in my thirties. Have I accomplished the things I once set out to do? Or am I continually revising the list? I'll have to give it some thought.

Becky Cole! From her apartment, who says I need to hurry up and play my next turn at online Scrabble.
Alan Payne! From his Blackberry, not surprisingly -- out tearing up the town. These are my first contacts in 2008. Thanks guys.

Meanwhile, whoever you are, if you read this, God bless you.