While driving to a friend’s solstice gathering, my friend Vivien mused about the upcoming New Year. “I have a theory,” she said, “that whatever you do on New Years Eve is symbolic to how you’ll spend the rest of the year.” I thought back to how I spent last New Years with a friend, recently turned friend with benefits, and sure enough, that evening foreshadowed the rest of my year. I didn’t have any regrets about last year, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure I wanted a repeat performance this year.
After a few whiskeys at the solstice gathering, I found myself in the garage with all of the other moms smoking cigarettes. With Vivien’s prophecy in mind, I claimed I was no longer going to smoke. “You don’t smoke now,” my friends teased.
“I smoked my first whole cigarette the other night. And after I sucked that baby down, I wanted another one. Then I felt like shit in the morning and decided I was too old to be taking up such bad habits.”
They nodded, continued smoking, and continued to ignore my pleas of, “Isn’t it dangerous for us to be smoking in a garage? I mean, there’s spilled oil and gas every where.”
Maybe I was tired of being ignored, or maybe the whiskey altered my reasoning, or maybe Vivien’s prophecy made me nostalgic, but the next thing I knew, I was inviting all of the smoking, drinking moms and their children to my house for New Years. The idea exploded, just as we were all going to do if we didn’t stop lighting matches in that damn garage, and soon enough, the party turned into a sleepover with pancakes in the morning. As my gut churned, and not from the Makers, I gathered my kids to go home. My first thought when I woke up in the morning was, “I’ve got to renege that invitation as soon as possible.”
It’s true, I love a party, but it’s also true, I don’t love parties with other kids. Eight years into this parenting gig and I still can’t wipe Lord of the Flies images out of my mind whenever I’m forced to be around more than five kids. On their own, my kids listen, sit down when they eat and actually use utensils, speak clearly and relatively calmly, and most of their favorite activities involve sitting on the couch and making up stories. I do not witness anything close to this when I attend “kid friendly” parties therefore, I avoid (or highly medicate myself before) these events and leave as soon as possible. But if this chaos was going to be in my house for twenty hours straight, I wouldn’t have any way to escape. Not only did I not want to endure this for an evening, there was no way in hell I was going to have it impact the rest of my year.
I called my friends and told them they were still free to come over as long as they left by 8:00 p.m.. Once they realized I wasn’t kidding, they invited me to their place instead. “I’ll think about it,” I said, “but I don’t really like to drive on New Years.”
I carried on through a very relaxing Christmas and the days afterwards without a firm plan for New Years. My suspicion was my kids and I would stay close to home and this was solidified after we attended a party on the 30th where almost everyone I talked to shared my sentiment of, “This is my New Years. Tomorrow I’m staying home.”
My kids were unaware that New Years is something to celebrate and they didn’t they know about the six invitations I politely turned down, so were not surprised when I put my pajamas on as soon as we returned home from the aquarium. Their friend’s dad picked his son up at 5:30, invited us again to their house, but stopped once I pointed to my slippers. After dinner, my kids performed a puppet show for me, complete with underwear on their heads and socks on their hands. We each chose cards from various tarot decks, read our prophecies, lit candles, and then crawled into bed to read. Around eight o’clock, I eased my guilt by checking in with a few friends. If they were sad and lonely, I told myself I could stay up for at least one glass of champagne. Fortunately, they were all either heading home or already home as well.
“Do you think we’ll regret this later?” I asked my friend Jill. “I suppose I could rally and invite x over.”
“Do you want him to come over?”
“No.”
“Then stay in your pajamas. I view this as a sign that we’re moving into a different phase; a less manic and more content phase.”
With that in mind, I crawled into bed with a snoring boy and cover-stealing little girl.
I woke up on New Years Day clear and refreshed, but still not certain if I set the right tone for the year. After eating homemade waffles, which in no way resembled Lord of the Flies, I felt a little reassured. While my kids scampered off to gather all of their Christmas presents to “sell” back to me, I checked my emails and learned that one of my essays was accepted into an anthology and another essay made the second round of cuts for a different anthology. This good news, along with the fact that all of my kids’ gifts only cost my fifty five cents the second time around, convinced me that 2011 was going to be a prosperous year in more ways than one.

Corbin Lewars is a writing mentor and author of Creating a Life: The memoir of a writer and mom in the making, which has been nominated for the 2011 PNBA book award. Her essays have been featured in over twenty-five publications including, The Seattle PI, Mothering, and Hip Mama. She teaches memoir and personal essay writing classes in Ballard. Contact her for details.