Tuesday, December 31, 2013

In Our House, This Isn't New Year's Eve

I thought about writing a year-end blog retrospection; you know, like all the hip blogging kids.  But actually I never really celebrated New Year's Eve like a normal grown-up.  The year I was finally 21, my (future) husband and I spent some time down in Florida visiting his grandparents during the new year.  I caught a horrendous stomach bug and my dreams of dancing past midnight ended up in the john; by way of celebration, my dear beloved made me jello in a champagne flute.

After that we were married and my husband was in med school and I can't remember if we were too broke or too tired, but we never did go dancing.

And then, 19 years ago, this day became something very different.  It became the birthday of our first child.  Our son.

We've always let our children chose what they wanted for dinner on their birthdays.  They could eat out or I would cook, their choice.  When he was three, just weeks before his sister was born, our boy chose McDonald's.  After that, for a long time, he chose a local Italian restaurant; he was always enchanted by the party hats on the table, especially for him.  For the past two years we've actually been vacationing on his birthday: just the four of us in Arizona, and then, last year, a small contingency on a Nile cruise ship, where our boy danced around the room with the waiters and was serenaded in English, Arabic, the Swedish dialect of German, and Norwegian.

It's nothing fancy this year.  We're home and happy.  We'll take him out tonight to the restaurant on State Street (his choice), and I'm making him cookies instead of a cake. 

It's been a marvelous 19 years.

No comments:

Post a Comment

The comments on this blog are now moderated. Yours will appear provided it's not hateful, crass, or annoying--and the definition of those terms is left solely to me.