What Are You Doing...

As for us, this year we're with the terrier presented to us by dear Mr. Addams in a rare non-macabre mood. Although I don't think, knowing Our Little Condo as I do, that there will be much in the way of festivities to lure us to the windows.

But I don't really mind. For years - decades, actually, I threw the New Year's Eve parties, starting at sixteen, when my enlightened (at least on that front) parents declared that if everyone attending had a note from a parent and a clearly understood way to get home, at midnight we could each have a glass of Champagne (in tiny hollow-stemmed saucers that probably hold three ounces, tops). Today they'd doubtless be headed straight to jail for such outrageous indiscretion, but at the time we thought it was daring and wonderful.

As a result, however, I've never really enjoyed not hosting this particular kind of entertainment, and the few New Year's Eves on which I've gone elsewhere have never been especially successful (one memorable night out in Manhattan excepted; the memories are both fuzzy and lurid, which is a nice combo in terms of looking back on youthful indiscretions).  There have been parties on three continents, ranging from soigné dinners for six or eight, all soft music and black tie, up to the largest, a truly ridiculous night a quarter-century ago in which over the course of about seven hours something on the order of 140 people trooped through my tiny Hell's Kitchen studio.  That night started late, after a concert I'd helped produce, and went until dawn. At one point around 3:30 a.m. a then-fast-rising young conductor made a dramatic appearance in a floor-length opera cape, on his arm a quite Well Known Soprano.  We were presented with the quandary of just what do to safeguard her rather jaw-dropping sable from the close quarters and stray bubbles, and someone ended up bundling it into the oven (most of the furniture having been stacked in the bathtub).  One can only thank the gods that no one got a sudden hankering for hot hors d'oeuvres...

But tonight will be very tame.  We may or may not venture out for an early dinner, likely at the little Continental place not too far away where we are familiar figures, and then perhaps we'll pop a bottle to get us through to Auld Lang Syne.  We'll be thinking, I'm sure, of years gone by, and of the moments good and not so in this long year. What lies ahead remains, of course, a mystery, but we've made it through this far, and with care and a little luck we'll all still be here next year.  In the meantime, darlings, do enjoy your own New Year's, where it it may find you.

For the last few years, I've fallen into the habit of listening, on New Year's Eve, to Judy Garland (yeah, I know - quelle surprise...), and to this song in particular. I've posted it before, but here it is again, for you and for me, for all of our beautiful days:

Here's to us, forever and always...