Happy New Year!

I don’t know what to expect this new year, but I have my suspicions. It may very well be like the last year which would be such a disappointment. I’m wishing for better. I figure it depends on me. I’ll be my best me. Maybe that is the key.

When I was a kid, I remember how disappointed I was when I got my first look at the new year. Nothing had changed. It looked exactly the same. I didn’t understand all the excitement, all the hoopla back then, but I did when I was older. I understood the hope each year brought. I still hang on to that.

Yesterday it poured. I had a 5 o’clock uke concert in Chatham, but the God of parking was good, and I got a close spot. The concert was great fun. The crowd sang along and clapped and did the rhythmic arm waving. For the first time, I had friends in the audience. It was wonderful.

The evening was quiet, but I enjoyed it. I had bought a few munchies so I noshed on cheddar, crackers and quesadillas. I drank egg nog. I watched movies. At midnight, I cheered and spun noisemakers to welcome the new year and ring out spirits of the old. I do think of the old year proverbially as that tired old man using a walking stick. I don’t think of the new year as a baby. It comes in dragging stuff with it. A teen? Maybe.

In my town in Ghana, cannons went off at midnight to announce the new year. I don’t remember parties, but the cold room at the Hotel d’Bull was so filled you didn’t feel the cold. It was a bar, and it was the only air conditioned room in the entire Upper Region; hence, its descriptive name. I drank there a few times, always Coke. Beer was big, but I didn’t drink beer. I didn’t like the taste. I still don’t. Nonetheless, it was a great bar. When I went back so many years later, the Hotel d’ Bull still existed but under an alias, the Black Star Hotel. The saddest part was the cold room was gone, replaced by a tiny Internet cafe with 4 machines. My first return was in the days before all of Bolga connected with the wider world so I went to that Internet cafe a few times. When I looked around, I still remembered the Hotel d’Bull. It was, back in its day, the fanciest place in town.

Today is going to be rainy. It is already damp. The weather is warmish, in the 50’s. The clouds are a light gray, not so ominous. I have a concert today at 5, but I need gas and a few groceries, including dog canned food, so I’ll go early and shop.

I don’t remember the first time I made it to midnight on New Year’s Eve, the first time I got to ring in the new year which is, if you think about it, quite a responsibility. We made a racket with our metal noisemakers. I spun mine for all I was worth. Out with the old. In with the new.

When I was older, I went to New Year’s Eve parties. We all did. I remember the hoopla at midnight, the toast, the yelling of Happy New Year and the kissing. One New Year’s Eve my mother and I did first night in Reading, the town next to hers. It was fun. We went to a few venues then stopped for dinner and had Chinese, traditional for New Year’s Eve. The last half of the evening we traveled all over town. We lasted until midnight.

I have no collection of celebrating New Year’s in Ghana other than dinner with friends. We were on school holiday, and I usually traveled to Accra then points east, Togo and Benin, Dahomey in my day. I’d run into friends I hadn’t seen in a while at the hostels in Accra and Lome, Togo, and we’d get together for dinner. I ate a lot of bifteck and pomme frites in restaurants along the water in Lome. I also remember a lobster dinner in Lome. The lobster had been grilled, first time I ever had it that way. In Accra, the treat was Chinese food, a few times of the year.

Tonight I’ll be home after the concert. I’ll be awake at midnight as I usually am, and I’ll welcome the new yer and make some noise. I always hope that every new year will be better than the old one wearily walking away.