A dream for the New Year

This column was patterned after a Randall column from 2001

Growing up, I could never understand why my mother went to bed before midnight on New Year's Eve.

In my opinion, grown-ups were supposed to get all done up and go out dancing at fancy parties and drink fizzy water from tall skinny glasses and kiss each other on the lips at midnight to usher in the New Year. At least, that's how they did it in the movies.

My mother was never big on movies. All she ever learned from movies, she said, was how to smoke and she was waiting for the sequel on how to quit.

I knew she worked long hours at the mill. I knew that she was tired. And old. I often told her, in my opinion, if she didn't want to stay up to celebrate, she could at least let me stay up to celebrate for her.

She'd always reply that I was too young to have an opinion and send me sulking off to bed.

So on New Year's Eve, I'd sneak a flashlight out of the closet, check the batteries, and hide it under my pillow.

And late that night -- while my mother slept and my stepfather snored and my brothers lay tangled up like a litter of pups -- I'd switch on the flashlight, pull the covers over my head and hold my breath, waiting to welcome in the New Year.

I didn't have a clock. Didn't need one. In the town where I grew up, people weren't much for parties on our side of the tracks, but you could be sure at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, some fool would fire off a shotgun, or maybe a few firecrackers, if I was lucky.

I always felt lucky on New Year's Eve, even stuck in bed with my head under a blanket, waving a flashlight like a bandleader with a fat baton. I felt lucky just to be alive.

I would whisper-sing a verse of "Auld Lang Syne," then do a quick review of the year, listing all major events of the past 12 months of my life. That never took long. Then I'd move on to give thanks by name, one by one, for all the people I loved.

As the flashlight grew dim and my eyes tried to close, I'd drift off to sleep picturing what wonders the New Year might bring, all the places I'd go, all the things I'd see, all the opinions I wouldn't get to have.

I'd lay it all out, season by season, month by month, in my mind and heart and soul exactly as I wanted and needed it to be.

Then I'd send it flying off to God, a picture-perfect prayer for the New Year.