You know, I didn’t think it would happen. I really didn’t. In hindsight, I should have predicted it, but I didn’t. Throughout the holiday season, I had been upbeat, happy even. I assumed I would get through New Years without a hitch in my giddy-up. I was wrong.
I had every right to be optimistic. I had been living through Covid affected holidays throughout the fall and early winter, and, frankly, I had taken the Covidization of each of them in stride.
It began with Halloween. I hate Halloween night. Not because I hate candy, but because I hate giving it away. Yeah, I’m a grump. So what. It is just wrong to part with candy. When the doorbell rings on Halloween, it makes Jake, our Golden Retriever, bark up a storm. Plus, the trick or treaters never know when to stop, even if we turn all the lights off in the front of the house. When Beverly Hills banned trick or treating, I smiled and went out and bought some candy I could keep and eat.
It continued with Thanksgiving, which actually felt pretty normal. I admit to having a love-hate relationship with Thanksgiving. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun. Bryan still made the drinks. I still made the turkey, gravy, various side dishes and the apple pie. Pam still made the mashed potatoes, yams and string beans. Shelby stepped up bigtime and made the dressing, and Lois still brought the See’s candy. We all still ate like pigs. Sure, we had a smaller crowd. Sure, we missed having Pam’s sister, Andrea, and her family (Jeffrey, Brandon and Rachael) and having Pam’s brother, Mitch, and his husband, Dale, at the table. Sure, we missed going to Steve and Linda’s, along with our friends David and Daryn and all the kids, for post Thanksgiving dinner dessert. But so much of it remained the same that it still felt like Thanksgiving.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day also felt pretty normal. As usual, Shelby and Bryan hosted us for a wonderful dinner on Christmas Eve, and we spent the day with them on Christmas Day. Nothing unusual except for the fact that Karen, Bryan’s mom, was with us, which only enhanced the holiday.
So there I was, metaphorically rounding third and heading for home, about to celebrate the last holiday of the season: New Years. I knew it would be different from the ghosts of New Years’ past, but I smugly thought I could handle it. To reiterate: I was wrong.
Pam and I have never been big New Year’s Eve celebrants. Over the years, we have had fun doing lots of group activities ranging from pajama parties to Polaroid scavenger hunts to movies and dinners on New Year’s Eve, all enjoyable. For the past couple of years, we have had an early dinner with John and Kris, usually at Porta Via in Beverly Hills, and then we would head home to see the ball drop in Time Square at midnight New York time. Not thrilling, but nice and very enjoyable, and it leaves us feeling great on New Year’s Day.
This year we went to Shelby’s for New Year’s Eve dinner. She did a great job, making lobster mac and cheese, salt crusted branzino, and spinach. We drank champagne. We reveled in the joy of listening to Portia try to blow her brains out with her noise maker. Sadly, none of that mattered.
What mattered was that I could not go to Porta Via. I could not sit on Canon Drive, sipping an old fashioned made with rye, watching people walk and cars drive by. I could not listen to strangers blowing their horns or watch them wearing their hats. I could not generate that ersatz feeling of excitement which is a requirement on New Year’s Eve.
We watched Andy and Anderson from Times Square on the TV. But I did not enjoy that either, as watching it felt more like watching an episode of Watch What Happens Live than like watching a New Year’s Eve special, mainly because looking at an empty Times Square was starkly depressing and very abnormal.
What did matter was that for the first time in the holiday season, I slumped into a funk. I went to bed that way, and I awoke that way. Every thing was just off, and I had the very real feeling that I was not about to feel normal anytime soon.
For more than a decade, we have spent New Year’s Day in Jeff and Lauren’s den, sitting on Jeff’s couch, feasting on football, Chinese chicken salad, BBQ chicken sandwiches, Lauren’s coffee cake and Pam’s chocolate chip cookies. Adding to the coziness of the day, Jeff has always tried to get us drunk by plying us with rounds of scotch, tequila and bourbon, with the occasional Bailey’s shiver thrown in for good measure. Kim, Shelby and Bryan show up, as do John and Kris and others. It has always been a great way to start the year. But not this year.
So I puttered around the house on New Year’s Day morning, knowing almost of that was not going to happen. Pam was making chocolate chip cookies, but that did not alter my mood, even though I knew I would be enjoying them. Nothing felt right. I did not know what to do with myself.
The Rose Parade had been cancelled. Even though I never watch more than 20 seconds of it, that hit me hard. So hard that I started flipping through the tv channels. hoping to find a replay of last year’s Rose Parade, a spectacle that in normal times I avoid because I find it about as exciting as watching a major league baseball game.
Compounding the absence of the parade and deepening my funk, I realized that I had no interest in watching a gaggle of college football bowl games this year, mainly because I have been disinclined to watch college sports during Covid, as I feel that the players are taking way too much risk without reasonable compensation.
Then I thought about the Rose Bowl and my funk hit its peak. The Rose Bowl. The granddaddy of all bowl games. A fixture in Pasadena for over a century. A game I have been to a couple of times and watched about 60 times. A game that belongs in Southern California. A game that should be played in the waning sunlight and long shadows of a gorgeous January afternoon in an outdoor stadium ringed by snow covered mountains. That was not going to happen this year, either. At least not in Pasadena. As one of the most heart wrenching Covid compromises, the Rose Bowl was going to be played in Texas, indoors at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the land of Ted Cruz, one of the politicians I most despise, and a state that is siphoning off many of California’s best companies, as California sinks deeper into the morass of progressive liberalism.
About midday, we all trundled off to Shelby’s for the afternoon. It was beautiful out. Another in a long string of picture postcard New Years’ days. Pam drove. Kim sat in the backseat complaining every time she hit one of the same bumps she hits every time we drove to Shelby’s. I sat in the passenger seat feeling off. With all due respect to Robert Earl Keen, I felt like I had a hole in my soul where the wind was blowing through.
Karen was generously treating us to New Year’s Day lunch, which we picked up from Nate N Als in Beverly Hills. I expected it would be good, and it was, but I was still mired in my funk, as I thought of Jeff’s sofa, Bailey’s shivers and Lauren’s coffee cake, along with everything else I would be missing.
Just when I least expected it, Bryan played the Scrabble card. He is a smart guy. He has been buying various games to play during Covid. Some fun. Some not. He even bought a chess board, hoping Shelby would play with him, but that is another story altogether.
Shelby and Kimberly had never played Scrabble. Bryan had. I played as a kid, and then I amused myself by playing it on my iPad to pass the time for a period of time, but I had not played for over a year. As we finished lunch and Portia went grudgingly off to her crib, Bryan pulled out the Scrabble board and the tiles. After a long discussion about rules and strategy and how to score without a computer, Bryan, Shelby, Kimberly and I began playing.
We played for over an hour, maybe closer to two hours. It provided me with a chance to focus on something I was doing, not on what I was missing. Kimberly, who hates word games, preferring logic and math puzzles instead, surprised us all by coming from behind on the last round and winning. I did not care who won. When the game ended, my funk was gone and my soul was whole.
Suddenly, I was looking forward to the rest of the weekend, as Portia was going to be staying with us for the next two days. On the way back home, with Pam driving and Kimberly and Portia in the backseat, I sat in the passenger seat and wondered if we had started any new New Years traditions.