New Year's Eve Lonely Heart

Why is New Year"s Eve one of those nights that has significance- I mean it's just a night- why is it built up into a big deal?

I guess on these so called "significant" days, like our birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years eve, Saturdays (kidding on this one), we are supposed to step back and ponder the significance of our lives-what we have been doing and what we hope to accomplish in the coming year.  Or, I'm not sure we are supposed to, but I do. I also tend to reminisce about previous birthdays, Thanksgivings, Christmases or New Years eves- I think because it is a natural thing to do (right?) and also I guess also to see if things have improved.

So this morning when I was doing my power walk/run (running- not so much on account of bum knee, iron poor blood, snow flurries and ridiculously icy wind) I was reminded of a New Year's eve I had when I was about 17.

I remember it was icy cold,(it were the icy cold that jogged my memory this morning), and my brother, Howard, who is 18 months my junior and his two best friends at the time, Lorne and Jeff and I were in Sainte- Agathe -des- Monts, a small town in the Laurentians in northern Quebec. I'm not sure how we got into town.  Lorne and Jeff, or rather their parents, had winterized cottages about 20 minutes away by car, so I don't know if we drove in or were dropped off or what. But the real question is not how, but WHY? Why indeed! Like I said, it was freezing cold- (the wind she blow blow blow) and it was dark, on account of it being eve in the winter.  I was 17 so the boys must have been 16 and none of us could legally get a drink in a bar, even in Quebec. We had a mickey of something- southern comfort or some such rot, which we were passing between us. We also were too poor and cheap to go and eat in a restaurant, so we were just walking around aimlessly. I don't know why I was with them- I guess I had nothing to do so they said come along. I knew Lorne and Jeff sort of like brothers- we had grown up and spent the last 10 summers at the lake together. At one point or another during the last few years we, (and by that I mean the individuals in our small group of friends- about 4 or 5 girls and 4 or 5 guys) were sort of "romantically" and I use that word loosely, involved with each other in various couples, (and at that time all heterosexually, though today I'm sure we would have experimented with "bi" because that is what the cool kids do),because we are all coming of age, geographically isolated in the summer, and learning about sexuality, alcohol and marijuana, so it was a natural thing, right? So I had fooled around with both of them in a pretty innocent, "making out", sort of way (but not together-  that would be kinky).

But really it was the guys who were good friends and they were undeniably and incorrigibly juvenile and immature (ya both dammit). They were laughing, playing with each other- skidding around on the icy streets, making farting noises, and getting drunk. But not drunk enough to take an interest in me. In fact I remember feeling blue, not just cause of the lack of circulation, but because I felt like such a loser.  It was so cold and black and miserable and there was nowhere to go and nothing to do.  I wanted to have a fun and interesting New Years Eve- cause NYE was a big deal and if your NYE went ok it meant things were ok and you were ok and normal and all, so-I wanted somebody -not my brother- do you mind! but one of the guys- Lorne or Jeff to hold hands with me, or walk with his arm around me and act like my boyfriend. I wanted a kiss on NYE as a minimum.

But it didn't happen. And I remember thinking- I could spin it as fun and cool to the outside world but I would know the truth. That I had nothing to do on NYE- and I had to hang out with my younger brother and his buddies, neither of whom was my boyfriend or even date, in the cold and dark and I didn't even get a kiss. I was a New Year's Eve Lonely Heart.

And even though tonight, Mr. Lovely and I will soon be going out for a New Years eve dinner with a group of very close friends and we will be inside (and hence warm) drink champagne, laugh and joke and ring in the New Year together and I believe I will get a kiss (I think Mr. Lovely will oblige), I look back on that NYE with a sadness and a longing- for my youth, for my innocence and naivete, for the edge, for the heartache and my resilience, and know that even though things are better in many ways that there was something bittersweet and important about that experience. It was sort of a big deal.