Goodbye to 2025

 

Adri was with me every year from Christmas day until after the new year, where she’d head home the Sunday before the first day of school after the winter break, so I was lucky enough to spend every New Year’s Eve with her (with the exception of 1999 when her mother was afraid of Y2K and insisted that she come home before January 1st. That’s a story for another day.)

My dad and grandparents were usually still in town and we’d spend the evening at my mom’s, noshing on finger foods such as olives, shrimp cocktail, pickled herring, brie, cheddar cubes, marinated artichokes, smoked oysters, crackers and spread, etc.

For some reason it became a tradition to watch a couple of 1950s sci-fi films that were fun and a bit schlocky: The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. These were a bit scary but harmlessly so, especially The Blob, staring what seemed like a 45-year-old Steve McQueen playing a teenager just trying to warn his small-town community of a monster in their midst, all in glorious technicolor. It had a great kitschy opening musical theme as well.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a bit darker, both literally (shot in black and white) and figuratively. The protagonist had to stay awake and not succumb to sleep lest he become a pod person, and we could all relate to this as we’d sometimes struggle to keep our eyes open until midnight, bellies full of tinned meat and artisanal cheeses as the last moments of the current year slipped away forever.

Then, at midnight, Adri would yell “Happy New Year!!!” as loud as she could, and, weather permitting, would go in the backyard to yell it so all the neighbors could hear it as well. My grandfather would show off that he still had a lip from his clarinet days and blow through an old (apparently?) decorative brass horn that my mom used as a wall hanging, always succeeding in getting it to bellow out a loud if muffled plaintive note that signified the new year had arrived.

Adri would then take the horn and give it a go but never succeeded, but then she lacked the decades of brass and woodwind experience that my grandfather had as a former band and orchestra teacher prior to his later administrative career. It was fun to see her try, though, eyes bulging and cheeks extended in perfect Satchmo style.

Back then I was still a bit melancholy about the loss of another year, but that gave way to the excitement of what laid ahead for my daughter’s life, the anticipation of getting to see yet another milestone. I’d miss the little girl we’d leave behind in the past, but the young woman she was quickly becoming more than made up for that. For once in my life, time didn’t seem to be a series of static events locked in place in the past but rather an evolving continuum.

As it should be.

As I’ve already droned on about, this year, of course, would not be that way. I was cognizant the entire time since the end of May that time was quickly slipping away, that 2025 and the reality and life it once held was slowly, then quickly, drifting into the past, never to return. New Year’s Eve just amplified this.

I would look at the clock Wednesday night the 31^st with dread seeing the passage of hours as we quickly approached midnight. I think it was pushing me over the edge (admittedly not very long journey as of late,) so I asked Cindy if she would mind if we watched The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and of course she said yes, but she did worry that it might be too much for me.

At that point, however, I hoped that the familiarity of those two movies, getting lost in them and thus not thinking about the ticking of the clock, would outweigh whatever sadness they’d invoke with memories of all the many Eves spent watching them with my daughter.

And it worked. Both movies are short, about 80 minutes each, and for 160 minutes my brain was given a rest. By happenstance we’d timed the viewing so the last movie ended right after midnight.

But perhaps it worked too well. Before I knew it, I heard the next-door neighbors loudly counting down in unison from 10, and it was only then that I looked at the clock and my watch and noticed it was 10 seconds to midnight.

For better or worse, I did not get to savor the last few minutes but rather had the last 10 seconds of 2025, the last 10 seconds of the last year Adrianna was alive, slip away with no time to think about the ramifications.

But I know: that was probably a good thing, right?

Midnight arrived, 2025 was gone forever, and now here’s 2026. I broke down and cried more openly than I have in months as Cindy and I embraced in a long hug that got me from one year to the next.

Steve McQueen had again saved his town, and Kevin McCarthy had finally convinced everyone that the pod people were real. Some things are set in time and never change, at least. I just wish I could have lived a life where I got to say goodbye to one year and welcome the next knowing that the next would be inhabited by Adrianna.