How an Auld Lange Syne Becomes a Love Letter

Twenty years ago, at just about this moment, ten minutes after midnight, I had just breathed a sigh of relief knowing that the Y2K scare had been what I suspected all along: a load of horse manure, and I was wondering what in the hell the recent ex was going to do with all the Ramen and canned meat he insisted we store (hoard) in our walk-in closet. Thankfully, I left him in July, six months before Y2K, and the divorce was final in November of 1999. I guess he ended up having to eat all that potted meat all by his lonesome. I started the new millennium out on a clean slate in a nightclub filled with strangers, feeling more alone than I’d ever felt in my life. I didn’t know anyone in the club. Two minutes after midnight, yelling into my blind date’s ear over the fading notes of Auld Lang Syne, I told that puzzled man to take me home and I never saw him again.

            

         Regrets, I’ve had a few, but in the end too few to mention. Good ole Blue Eyes (Frank Sinatra for all of you born before 1980).   It’s been a helluva ride. In 2000 I started work as a high school teacher, in 2001 I came down with autoimmune issues, (thanks germy kids), 9/11 happened, and my house burned down. Nowhere to go but up, right?

            

          The next five or so years were a blur of trying to raise three kids, work, juggle bills, and trying to get a handle on how my body was betraying me with almost constant mind numbing fatigue and pain. Work, rest, work, rest became my life. I just got out of bed every morning and made it through One.More.Day. I had to. I was a mom.

            

          In 2005 I met My Jim. We went on our first date to a jazz club in Macon on July 9, 2005. Three years later, on December, 21, 2008, I married him in New York City. I knew a good thing when I saw it. The past fourteen years have been a roller coaster of traveling to places I never dreamed I’d go: Midway Atoll, Hawaii, touring every museum in D.C four times, the Met in NYC five times. We’ve sat in the pews of the majestic St. John the Baptist cathedral and celebrated Winter Solstice, we’ve had salt water spray in our faces on ferries to Ellis Island and Ocracoke Island.  Together, My Jim and I have pilgrimaged to probably fifty independent book stores, even driving hundreds of miles out-of-the-way to buy books and cuddle yet another bookstore cat. We’ve been to Broadway shows and Niagara Falls. We’ve sat in smoky jazz clubs in New Orleans and New York City. We’ve eaten in Chinatown, Nathan’s Hot Dogs on Coney Island, and run-down roadside BBQ stands in the Mississippi Delta. We’ve put more miles on a car in one year than most people put on a car in five. We’ve flown, rode on trains, and stood on crowded subways.

             

          We lost our beloved dog Truman, and mourned his death together, and welcomed two new pups who had no homes and gave them love and laps to sit on. We’ve welcomed six grandchildren, and though they aren’t of My Jim’s blood, they are of his heart. My Jim helped me pack when I wanted to go teach overseas, he held me when my dad died an agonizing death,  he told me everything was going to be okay and that it wasn’t my fault when I became too ill to teach any longer, and held me up after I delivered the eulogy at my best friend's funeral two years ago, and I held him up when his only sister recently passed away.

          These are the moments that make up the years, that make up a life. All mixed together like raindrops on a spring day splashing into a sun soaked puddle.

            

          This started out as a look back on the past nineteen years and how I’m looking forward to the next two decades, but it ended up being a love letter to My Jim because he has been a part of almost every day of this millennium that matter the most to me. He's made the past fourteen years worth living and has turned each and every day into a supreme, exciting adventure. He loves me with short or long hair, sick or well, purple hair or blonde, blue jeans or dresses. He loves me with a picket sign in my hand or when I’m writing late into the night on a short story that I have to write NOW.  He loves me when I bring home a new dog and when I ask him to go out late at night because we've run out of dog food for the dogs or chocolate cereal for the grand kids. He loves me when we're both sitting quietly reading or when I'm bouncing around the house talking a mile a minute over a news article that's gotten my dander up. 

And because I was all alone on New Year’s Eve 2000 in a nightclub filled with drunk, happy confetti throwing strangers and was more lonesome than I’d ever been in my life, tonight I cherish 2020 even more.

            

          Here’s to many more decades, love of my life..