New Year’s Eve has brought many pieces together in a brimming, messy basket. All the lights in the house are on, and I’ll be leaving them on – there will be no energy saving dark rooms tonight. Tonight I want it all front and center, tangible, visible, obvious. The brightly lit house will welcome home the “eight to ten” teenagers who will be landing here sometime in the wee hours after celebrating First Night. The stack of pizzas is already on the kitchen counter waiting for the pre-X-Box-then-pass-out feed, any leftovers to undoubtedly be eaten for breakfast, likely around midday tomorrow.
The lights on the trees are on, too, the last night of the green and lights and colorful glass food ornaments I’ve collected for at least thirty years. 
Strawberries, French bread, a purple eggplant, silver-white garlic, a glittering lemon wedge, and myriad fruit, vegetables, pastries and other foods, mostly hand-blown and a tradition my kids have grown up with. 
When Jake was six he remarked, baffled, “why is there a star on the top of that tree?” as we passed a town common’s Christmas display. After vaguely explaining the religious significance that others put on the holiday (you know honey, Jesus, Bethlehem, manger) he’d looked at me and said, “and he was a cook?” We’ve always had a chef’s hat atop our tree.
The day started with what is now becoming a familiarly awkward good morning to my new roommate – OK, walking a tightrope may not be as easy as it seemed at first. I’ve asked him to help me with a song project, a sad, ouchy undertaking but something I need to do. We were supposed to have been playing music together all these years. For reasons I have yet to understand he abandoned that, but now, as we walk toward the end of our road together, I need this from him, and he’s agreed to do it. So he played and I sang a rough version of the song, and in the hush afterwards I…went to check e-mail as he disappeared upstairs without a word. The music too aching, I think, for either of us to acknowledge right then. When he came down he had his coat on, headed to the studio and then to a friend’s for a drink, apparently. Not plans known to me, and not my business any more.
Boys in and out all day, the last out preceded by the manic planning for the overnight event, making room for the air mattresses, making beds for as many as we can fit. We can fit a lot.
I trained the dogs who are now holding down the couches, talked to a few friends, lit a fire, turned on the TV. Here it is, all laid out in front of me. Much that’s changing, much that’s leaving or will remain, at least for now. Much to mourn, but more to be grateful for on this night where something ends just as something else begins. There will be nights harder than this, lonelier, when the boys aren’t here, the days emptier, the good things not so obvious. But for tonight I’ll pour a drink, soak it all in and give a toast for auld lang syne. Happy New Year.