On some occasions, poor Granny would have a couple of her children's offspring all gathered at one household - a mini party for us. Granny had nine children and all of them has had their own family - there are twenty-nine of us in my generation! We cousins had great fun together, though back in those days I do recall a certain level of bickering, a slightly dilute form of sibling rivalry. As the third oldest of them, I still feel that the youngest are so, so young (even though some of them are now mothers themselves), and in a weird extension of big-sister-hood, I'm so proud of my cousins. I've watched many of the younger ones grow up, or have lived through life's ups and downs with those in the same age bracket as me...And why, might you ask, am I talking about cousins on New Years Eve?
Well, the whole event just serves to make me nostalgic. I've done my sisters head in all week on the phone, trying to rope her into deep-and-meaningfuls. Easy for me at this end - not so much so for her with her two young boy's rough and tumble in the back ground. And thats my point, to some degree.
How things have changed since the days when we rung in the New Year with Granny. First, we got to an age when instead of our parents going out, we where the ones who just could NOT miss the New Years Eve Disco at the parish hall (Ballymacnab Disco! And - yes- I really did live in a place called Ballymacnab.) Our poor parents gave up their own nights out to become our taxi drivers.
Then we left home and didn't much notice what our parents did for New Years, BUT we'd never miss being in just the right bar at just the right time (said bar was often too packed and the prices of the drinks hiked up, but that didn't matter as the queue to the bar was so long that you'd only get the chance to buy two drinks the entire evening anyway).
Approaching our thirties, we remembered that not only did we have parents but that they were pretty cool people, and it was fun to spend New Years Eve actually with them. Parties shifted from packed bars to packed houses.
Last week, I heard that my Mum offered to babysit my nephews and let my sister and brother-in-law go out to party, thus closing the circle!
So that's looking back - what about looking forward?
New Years Resolutions
1. Eat less.
2. Exercise more.
3. Weed more.
4. Write more.
Nothing very exciting - I think I much prefer the nostalgia than the resolution thing!
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| Pacific Ocean, Marin County, California |
Byddi Lee
