Jupiter

I love the New Year holiday; it leaves Christmas in the dust, as far as I am concerned. I love the clean, clear, fresh idea of it, the monastic optimism of resolutions, the fact that its twin motifs are pleasure and reflectiveness. I have spent New Year's Eves in my life lots of different ways: eating snails & dipping my tongue into a glass of champagne at Dad's house as a child, attending very chaste co-ed sleepovers at Fiona Stoner's house in high school, dressing to the nines for a quiet night at home, howling at the moon in Bryan Park, burning the bad out of the old year with a muneca, and, most often, sleeping.

Yesterday morning I was, unexpectedly, sick with grief. I remembered that last New Year's Day was the last time I spoke to Dad when he was cogent, when I called to wish him a happy new year. What happened was so horrible, but I don't feel like stomping on the ashes of 2011. It was good to spend the evening quietly with friends: first with new friends--friends I made in 2011--and their families, surrounded by children, and then later with old friends, and Mom and Virginia. I had planned to take Henry and James home to bed before going on to Carol and Ron's house, but at the last moment decided to bring them along, and I am so glad I did.

James was awake long enough to smile & show off his brand-new knitted balaclava, then spent the next two hours sleeping with the focus of a yogi in my lap and in Mom's. Henry spent most of the time mute and hiding under a table, eating chocolate half-dollars, but just before we were ready to leave, he grew bold and went to make friends with Ron, stargazing on the back deck.

As we started driving home, Henry said to me from the back seat, "That's a good man."
"Yes," I agreed. "You mean Ron?"
"Yes," Henry said. "He just picked me right up to look." The he offered the highest praise he could come up with. "Daddy loooves Ron."
"Well," I said, "Daddy only met Ron one time. He doesn't know him very well."
"Then who lifted Daddy up to look at planets when he was a kid?"

It was good to be lifted up last night.

(This morning I encouraged Henry to tell Peter which planet Ron had held him up to see. He hesitated, then remembered: "Judith.")