New Year's Eve is by far my favorite holiday. Everyone is happy, there's so much to look forward to, you get to dress up silly, you get to kiss people at midnight, you get to drink, and First Night St. Louis. And you don't have to make an elaborate meal or think up gifts for people. It's a perfect holiday. No one is excluded, except maybe the Chinese and the Mayans - but props to them for sticking to their own calendars in the face of all of the rest of society.
New Year's Eve in Marathon, Florida, is pretty rockin', I must say. My whole family is staying in tonight, to toast with pink champagne (my parents had pink champagne at their wedding - I thought it was rare, apparently it isn't) at midnight. The reason we're not going out is because all of the residents of the Keys (disdainfully called the "Keysters" by my brother Clay and his wife Liz) are drunk ALL THE TIME - and make no sense ever - and will especially be inebriated tonight.
It's funny being around your family - especially around multiple generations at one time. You see every one's past and future all at once. And all idiosyncrasies and characteristics come out, like obsessive reading. Sometimes during the week I have been in kind of a storm, distracted by all the little details of every ones' personalities and interactions with each other and then suddenly a little chink of blue sky comes through and I see for a split second how normal it all is and how lovely. But that is only sometimes.
Things I've discovered this week:
- my brother Clay believes the 9/11 was a total government conspiracy. He's having us watch Loose Change later.
P.S. - Tonight I beat my whole family (being the 7th wheel I was all by myself on my own team while all the rest of the couples were together) twice at Scrabble. For this I want to thank the Facebook application Scrabulous and Claire, whom I play on a regular basis and is really good.
Also - around midnight my brother Cris and I decided it was a good idea to try to break open the $1 coconuts that my neice Natasha found - to no avail. But - my favorite quote from the night came as a result. I was trying to smash the coconut as hard as I could against the sidewalk outside the place we're staying and Cris advised "yeah, try the sidewalk, or you could throw the coconut against the palm tree which would result in huge amounts of irony."
I love New Year's.
you're welcome.
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