Fern: Happy New Year, my love. Though not my favorite time of year.
Joe: Why? You like a party. Too much forced gaiety?
Fern: That. And people who are alone feel alone more. Everyone wishing for peace in the new year and there’s never been. It’s depressing, don’t you think?
Joe: For someone who’s really a lot of fun, you are not a barrel of holiday laughs.
Fern: I’m just glad December is over and we don’t have to listen to Little Drummer Boy in the mall. Also the days are getting shorter.
Joe: We didn’t spend our early New Years together. Tell me about your New Year’s Eves past.
Fern: My parents went to parties. As a little girl, I loved watching my mom dress up and put on high heels and sparkly jewelry. She had a fur coat. Did your parents go out on New Years Eve?
Joe: My parents? Please. I did see my mom drink a beer in public once. But it wasn’t New Year’s or anything, just some sort of outdoor market.
Fern: One New Years Eve when I still lived in New York I went to Times Square to watch the ball drop. Crowds of people, many drunk, pushed against each other like a wave. There was little security. It seems dangerous to me now. Everyone was cheering at the countdown. My feet were freezing in vinyl fashion boots and I couldn’t wait for the ball to drop so I could go home. Well, I crossed that one off a bucket list.
Joe: When I was little we had a family New Year tradition. At the stroke of midnight, my mother would swing open the door to let out the evil spirits of the past year; we kids helped chase them out by banging spoons against kitchen pots.
Fern: Tradition? Sounds more like superstition.
Joe: In my family, there was not a distinction. New Years is a time of facing the unknown, a time of both opportunity and of risk, and for us, that meant heightened superstition. At least superstitions make you feel you’re doing something to control what really, you can’t control. One New Year’s superstition in the old country was starting the year with a white dish.
Fern: White?
Joe: I mean white as in the color white. The Lebanese serve something white, as an indicator of starting fresh, blank slate, and the meal could be sish barak—velvety dumplings in a minty hot yogurt sauce—or, my favorite, mouhalabiyeh, a dessert similar to pana cotta. The French Crusaders who brought the dish home with them called it Blanc du Syrieh. Or white Syrian stuff.
Fern: You’ve made that. I love mouhalabiyeh. Didn’t one of the kids say that it was the most delicious thing she ever put in her mouth?
Joe: Yes. And her sister said it tasted like someone spritzed the dish with perfume. The mixture of rose and orange blossom water actually made her gag. It’s a thankless job, cooking for children.
Fern: One winter in late December -- I was newly married to my first husband --I totaled our car on a snowy highway. The car spun 180 degrees, hitting the guardrail. We both survived with only a couple of bruises and lacerations.
That New Years we were invited to a “progressive” dinner party. Appetizers at one house. First course at another. None of us had children yet, but it seemed like a very grown-up thing, this sort of dinner party. People had been drinking at each house. By the time it got to dessert at our apartment, I was crying and in full panic mode. We didn’t have the name for it then: PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress from the car accident.
Joe: I think we could do a whole column sometime on issues we recognize today only because we have names for them that we didn’t have back then. But back to New Year’s memories that you and I didn’t share. I (barely) remember a college frat party where I drank way too much. Since that night I haven’t been able to tolerate the smell, much less the taste, of Southern Comfort. (No wonder they lost the Civil War.)
Fern: Did I ever tell you that I lost my virginity on New Year’s Eve. It seems a strange locution: losing your virginity. As if virginity is something you can “lose.” Like an umbrella. I remember thinking after: What’s the big deal?
Joe: You’ve always been such a romantic.
Fern: How about resolutions? Did you ever make new years resolutions?
Joe: No. Well, I never would drink Southern Comfort again, but that was more a dictate of nature. How about you?
Fern: When I was in high school and kept a diary, I promised in the new year to write in it every night. I didn’t follow through. I always put off writing.
Joe: And here we are, writing this column on the eve of.
Fern: Being a writer is like having a term paper due for the rest of your life.
Joe: How about regrets? You have a few? Too few to mention?
Fern: Well, selling my parents’ condominium in Florida after they died? New Years Eve in Florida was warm. They had that cute condo built around two man-made lakes. A pier and an artificial covered bridge. Like a geriatric Disneyland.
Joe: Yeah, we shouldn’t have sold it.
Fern: My brother wanted to. He said only old people lived there.
Joe: And now we are old people.
Fern: Except we don’t have a condo near the beach.
Joe: What I remember best about going down to your parents’ place in Florida was the deli around the corner, its refrigerated case displaying lox and whitefish, and, oh the chopped liver sandwiches! You know—if I may briefly mansplain . . .
Fern: Briefly mansplain? That’s an oxymoron.
Joe: I read that smells and tastes can bring back the past so vividly because smell and taste receptors are positioned so close to the brain mechanism that stores memory. There’s a name for it: the Proustian Effect.
Fern: Speaking of memory, remember the New Year’s scene from When Harry Met Sally? I loved that. How it’s new years and she goes to the party alone and he runs and runs to find her, just before midnight and . . .
Joe: Ah, maybe you are really a romantic.
Fern: I’d like to watch that movie again some time.
Joe: What else would you want? Wish for?
Fern: I don’t know. More time. Good health. And world peace is always a hope. That’s what I want, I guess.
Joe: Well, happy New Year, my love.
The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
Have you explored the variety of writers, plus Letters from Iowans, in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative? They are from around the state and contribute commentary and feature stories of interest to those who care about Iowa. Please pick five you’d like to support by becoming paid. It helps keep them going. Enjoy:
You don't need to regret selling the condo--after the Surfside condo building collapsed, our legislature said that all the condos and their reserve funds needed to be brought up to date. The Florida representatives are either idiots or evil (maybe both), 75% of the buildings were thrown into crisis--it would be hard enough to have labor to fix up 10% of the buildings, let alone 75%. People who paid $200,000 for a condo are now anticipating a huge special assessment, maybe as much as they paid for the condo, to bring them up to snuff. That's why the building in Surfside collapsed--they had endless arguments about whether or not to fix the structural flaws. Turns out, they should have done the work.
Our neighboring building (where Ivana Trump used to live) had huge special assessments--friends of friends had one $300,000 and then $150,000, presumably to cover the shortfall that always happens here in Miami.
I think we've invited you before--we suggest a week. And a fair warning: we have a cat, so if you're really allergic, it's not a good fit. But I know we'd really enjoy having you. There's a king bed, a pull out sofa and your own bathroom (which is also the cat's bathroom). Mark and Joe could make Lebanese food. Yum!
Love so many things about this column. Fern, Dave and I tried to do a Times Square New Year's Eve once, too. We lasted about 20 minutes--it was terrifying (1986--people were throwing bottles up in the air, with no care as to where they landed...). We went home to our apartment in Brooklyn and watched the ball drop on TV.
Joe--we did the spoon-banging against pots-and-pans too! I just never knew why--I thought it was just a cheap noisemaker.
And this line cracks me up: "Being a writer is like having a term paper due for the rest of your life."
Oh man...kind of feeling that right now as I work on next week's post!!!!
Cheers and best to you both.