NYE

Another Christmas has come and gone. It's been busy and full of family events, pretending to be Santa and an over-abundance of gifts. Tomorrow will be New Years Eve, the end of the year - again. A year in which I accomplished nothing except for keeping my children clothed and fed. C'est la vie.

We'll spend New Year's Eve with my family in North Carolina this year, which will be fun. We always spend NYE with the kids, doing kid's things. My vote is go to sleep early, but I will try to make it until midnight.

I will regale you with a story of one of my favorite New Year's Eves. On New Years Eve in 2003, we were moving to Dallas, Texas. We decided that we wanted to move to Dallas because it "seemed like a cool city." We left New Jersey the day after Christmas, after an extended stay, and made the trip to Texas. It took us 2 days to get to Oklahoma, where we spent a few days visiting with friends.

On December 31st, we woke up at 5:30 am and loaded in the car and made the four and a half hour drive to Dallas. We couldn't have been more excited. We were embarking on a new adventure. We had $2,400 in our bank account, no jobs...I was 19 and pregnant but we believed that everything would work out. We would live off of love and that $2,400 until we secured employment. Then, we would live happily ever after. The world seemed like it was filled with unlimited opportunities and possibilities. We didn't care that we didn't know a SOUL in Texas (our closest friends were over 300 miles away and our families over 1,400 miles away). We had each other.

We watched the sun come up over the Texas plains and admired the beauty of our new home state. After what seemed like forever, we could see the city in the horizon. It was like a mirage, a huge city in the middle of no where. We were on the yellow brick road on the way to Oz.

Our pre-printed MapQuest directions led us to our apartment that we had picked almost 8 months prior. We signed all the paperwork and they led us to our new apartment. It was not the apartment we had looked at or put a deposit down on. This apartment was 375 square feet and the living room wall was a huge floor-to-ceiling mirror that was riddled with water stains. It was a dump. "This is not the apartment we were shown...." We went back to the office where we got everything straitened out. The office manager was very apologetic and told us that we could move into the apartment we wanted....as soon as one became available.

The dumpy apartment with the hideous mirror would have to do in the meantime. I was upset, but resigned. The ARMY movers showed up a short while later and began to unload our things into our temporary apartment. Our possessions had been in storage for 4 months and I was excited have all my stuff back.

After what seemed like a short time, they declared that they were done. Boxes were missing, our table and chairs were missing, half of our entertainment center was gone, our desk was in splinters. We didn't have a couch, but we did have a futon. The frame was bent and the cushion never arrived. Our bed frame was bent and not salvageable. I made a fuss to the moving guy and he was uninterested. He handed me a stack of claim forms and told me that the ARMY would have to deal with it. He even slammed the door when he left.

We stood in the middle of the apartment and I looked around and realized that we had no furniture. Everything we had struggled to acquire in our first year of marriage was gone. The grief was too much for my pregnancy hormones, I sat down and wept. My husband rubbed my back and tried to be helpful.

I realized that we had just been playing house. There was no more safety net of a military paycheck being deposited every 1st and 15th, we were on the verge of becoming parents in 7 months, we made horrible decisions.

After my outburst, I sucked it up and began to unpack the boxes that had come. I loaded the plates and forks into the dishwasher and unloaded the linens. We worked until the evening and then decided to have dinner at Subway because it was the only restaurant close to our apartment. We ordered our sandwiches and I asked the manager if they were hiring. He said he was and he gave me a job on the spot and told me to come in on Monday. That was the highlight of the day, getting a job at Subway. That might be the saddest sentence ever written.

We went back to the dumpy apartment and my husband pulled out a bottle of wine he had purchased during our visit to Oklahoma. "It's New Years Eve, I'm drinking this wine." The only problem is, we didn't own a corkscrew. We were not legally old enough to drink during our first year of marriage. He declared that surely there was somewhere that we could get a corkscrew and that we should explore a bit.

We headed into the car and went to pull out of the apartment. This was the days before GPS, so we had no idea where we were going. "Let's make a left. It looks like we might find a place that sells cork screws if we make a left." We made the left, then a right, then a few more lefts. We didn't find anywhere that sold a cork screw, but we did find ourselves terribly lost and driving through the ghetto. I was scared. My husband had to ask a man at a convenience store who sat behind bullet proof glass how to get directions back to our apartment.

We made it back to our apartment alive and I sat on the living room floor. My husband walked over to the wine bottle and then rummaged through the dishwasher. I watched in amazement as he pulled out a steak knife and began to stab the cork over and over again. He was pretending to be Jack the Ripper. The cork began to crumble and was all over the counter and in the bottle itself. He poured a generous amount into a mug and sat next to me and began to pick the cork particles out that were floating on the surface.

He took a sip and declared, "This wine tastes like shit." He continued to drink it anyway. We both sat there, silently, in our dimly lit apartment while a cloud of disappointment that hung over us rained down. It weighed heavy upon us.

At 9:20 we decided to go to bed. We slept on our mattress on the floor, with just a blanket covering it because I couldn't find the sheets. I welcomed sleep, anything to escape from this new horrible reality. Our day that started with excitement and hope had dissolved into utter despair.

I was awoken in the middle of my sleep by my husband nudging me. "Honey, honey. It's 2004. Happy New Year." I looked up at the alarm clock that rested clumsily in the middle of the floor. The big, red, glowing numbers read 12:05. Yea, Happy New Year.

The next day was the first day in the New Year. Things started to come together. A new apartment was ready in 3 days. It had a balcony and a small fireplace and a built in for my knick knacks. We found jobs and brought a new cherry red sofa, a table, a new desk. It was a fine apartment for a young family. We made enough money to pay the rent, eat, and have just enough left over for our poverty to be bearable.

Our oldest daughter was born that summer and the month after she was born, I received a check from the ARMY. It was in the amount of $1,200 to replace our lost items. I chuckled when it came.

It is my favorite New Years Eve, because it is a reminder that no matter how bleak and horrible things can seem - there is always tomorrow. You can always start again. A reminder that God has always made provisions for us. It reminds me to count my blessings.

Here is to a wonderful, prosperous, and blessed New Year...and a New Years Eve that is less crappy than the one in 2003!