My mom used to tell me that whatever you are doing on New Year’s Eve is what you will be doing the whole year, so make certain you are with the ones you love and that you are wearing polka-dots.

The first NYEs I can remember were ones with lots of preoccupied partying adults, and us kids running around underneath them in our own world; all of us excited to be up past bedtime.

When the clock struck twelve, my mom handed us some pots and pans and we ran outside with them. We clamored them with wooden spoons, screaming and scaring away any evil that might have wanted to cross over with us into the New Year.

These days, since I can’t always be with everyone I love, I try to take a little time to at least think of my loved ones with the happiest thoughts I can muster as I enter the New Year. When the clock strikes twelve, I feel happiness, gratitude and love for the friends and loved ones that are near, and I let my mind travel to where each of my loves ones are afar.

My mind travels down the yellow dust roads through the hills to find Dad in El Paso reading a book underneath warm lamp light. Then it rides along fields lined with bare dark trees to Mom’s house. Sometimes I feel like those trees know me; they’ve seen me pass so many times. They calm me and drink away any sadness as I pass.

In previous years, when I’ve traveled to where E. is, it has been to a disco-tech, and he is underneath silver lights, music and confetti, dancing dancing dancing. This year, my mind does not have to travel far to see him, and I don’t even have to stay within the confines of my mind since E. is staying with us temporarily.

Him being here has stirred up so many memories. He reminds me and I remind him; we show them to one another the same way we used to show each other shells as we found them by the seaside. We collect these memories together and tie to them little strings of conclusions as to why, trying to categorize and make sense of them, since we were both too young to understand then.

I can’t be entirely certain if our reasonings are true, because they happened so long ago and they almost don’t even seem real anymore. Some of them are sad and most are very unclear, but the process of trying to make sense of the nonsense is somehow helping me to put them behind me, and I hope its doing the same for him too.

This memory collection and sending off of them seems fitting for the New Year as well. Fresh starts are always good.

Where will you be NYE? Do you have a unique ritual to bring in the New Year?

Happy New Year.