Happy New Year

I started liking New Year’s Eve a lot more when I stopped worrying about having a date.

It started when I read in some magazine in junior high that you were doomed to a year of bad luck if you didn’t kiss someone at midnight on New Year’s Eve. That one kiss was the key to whether you had a good year or a bad year. Since I had never kissed anyone on the holiday at that point and thought my life was terrible (boys did not like me, therefore life sucked), it had to be true. Otherwise, why would Seventeen print such a claim?

The theme continued into high school. My freshman year, I was an awkward 14-year-old with bad hair who was taller than most of the other girls. I had strict parents who didn’t allow me to date, so I spent that New Year’s Eve baby-sitting with my friend Becky. We vowed that boys would like us in the New Year, and the vow was so strong that I convinced myself that it would come true, despite the lack of a New Year’s kiss. I spent the next year with even worse hair, no style and no boyfriends. I graduated with honors, a college scholarship, better hair and a total of four dates in four years of high school. College had to be different, I told myself. For starters, there would be more boys to choose from, and at least one of them had to like me. The odds were in my favor.

Well, the odds may have been in my favor, but they weren’t on my side when it came to New Year’s Eve. My college boyfriend spent the Christmas and New Year’s holidays in the Florida Keys with his father and stepmother, who were loud, obnoxious and liked to remind the world they had money. I spent them freezing in the Midwest winters with family and friends.

I finally had my first New Year’s Eve kiss in 1997, 12 years after I first read that Seventeen article. My then-boyfriend and I were four months into what would be an eight year relationship. I worked that evening, but I was off at 10:30. He met me at my apartment with a cheap bottle of champagne and kissed me at midnight. I expected to wake up the next morning with bluebirds singing around my head like Mary Poppins. Instead, I woke up with a headache and the taste of horrible champagne lingering in my mouth like a guest who refuses to leave.

That was the start of many New Year’s Eve nights with a date. None of them are memorable. In fact, I started taking it for granted until he left me a week before Christmas 2005. He had a date that New Year’s Eve. I didn’t. He married her a year later, so I assume he kissed her at midnight.

I stayed home that evening, watching a Sex and the City marathon and thinking back to that magazine article. It had been 20 years since I started worrying about the New Year’s Eve kiss. I had convinced myself that kissing someone at the stroke of midnight was the key to a happy life. I thought long and hard about my life. Some years were good, and some were bad, but I had a lot to be grateful for, and a lot of blessings to count. I had a good career that enabled me to support myself. I had family and friends who loved me. My father had almost died the month before from a heart attack, but he recovered and was still with us. My mother was beating the liver disease that almost took her life a few years ago. None of this had anything to do with a silly kiss.

I went to bed early that night and woke up the next morning with a clear head and no bad champagne taste in my mouth. That year, 2006, ended up being a good year. I stayed in and relaxed that New Year’s Eve, too. 2007 was an even better year because I bought my own home—the first woman in my family to buy her own house.

As we wind down 2008, I again have planned a relaxing evening. A local yoga studio is hosting a “24 Hours of Yoga” event starting tonight to raise funds for charity. I’m going to attend a few classes, go home and watch a movie. I plan to be asleep before midnight, with my dog and cat snuggled warmly beside me. I will talk to my parents before going to bed, wishing them a Happy New Year, and I will count my blessings. Because I realized on that New Year’s Eve three years ago that life is what you make of it. There are good times and bad times, but it is what we learn from and how we respond to those bad times that make the good times even sweeter.