Finding New Year's at American University, 1976, by Royelen Lee Boykie

From MemoryArchive

Who: Royelen Lee Boykie  
What: Finding New Years
When: 1976
Where: The American University

My mother was afraid of New Years. She was afraid of the accidents that might occur; the memories seeping into awareness through a body fighting to ignore them; the yearnings that had no rest -- even as the old year died off and was born anew. She was especially afraid of that sad song evoked at midnight when all the old aquaintances were droned on about.

The new year was just a new number attached to a struggle from her pit of pain. As our mother she needed to protect us from the dangers of New Years -- and so her children and family were kept inside, away from the horrors of the cars on the highways and safe with her and her misery. Some years she might put out a plate of sliced green peppers with pepperoni and pretzels, other years my father would take on tossing a Wasp-influenced antipasto and always there was the beer --- and the pots and pans.

At midnight, dressed in my pajamas, boots, coat, scarf, hat, the door was opened up for me and I was allowed out into the New Jersey night -- church bells ringing and a car horn or two honking -- with a pot and a pan to bang against one another. I walked around the hibernating red maple in the front yard and stomped in the snow and banged and called out "Happy New Year!" Neighbors would come to the door, wave, say "Happy New Year" and quickly close the door to the icy cold. A time or two my cousin Karen was there to join in. Pot banging was a tradition my mother had learned in the city neighborhood of Newark -- it was one acceptable acknowledgement of New Years. The other was the midnight phone calls to other family members safely tucked away in their homes -- sometimes only blocks away.

In 1976 I began my college education at The American University and gathered up friends, some of whom had strange family memories and straining parental relationships. Soon after we all had graduated, we began what has become a tradition through three decades of gathering for New Years -- of venturing out in cars, in cabs, in buses on that night I learned as so dangerous. Our parties had revelry and mischief, lots of mischief. At midnight pots banged and phone calls were made.

In 1987, the demons seized my mother and she became immobilized. She was forced to call out for help and the pharmaceutical companies responded. A neuropsychopharmacologist brewed up a special recipe for her. The anguish receded and life returned for her. Except for New Year's, she reserves that for staying inside and receiving phone calls from her daughter and her daughter's AU friends.

For 25 years we've spent New Year's Eve together. Today we argue about where they've all been spent -- our memories don't call up the details so quickly anymore. Did we go to the cottage in the Virginia woods in 1991 or 1992? Fortunately we have a horn, a metal party horn that has inscribed clues as to the location of parties through the late 1980's and into the 1990's. We've been as far as San Francisco and LA but most often find each other in New York.

In earlier years we might have fallen to sleep in front of fire places or in an empty space on a bed and found ourselves suprised at who was with us in the morning. Now we have sit down dinners with elegant hosts and hostesses and tiny Manhattan hotel rooms with cable to return to. This past year our furthest AU grad came in from Australia. She came without need of an escort -- as did all the women at the event. The male AU grads came mostly partnered -- with other men. Our only conventionally married AU grad was in Disneyland with his family -- he rarely misses our yearly event, this time it was those of us who gathered that did the missing.

So this year at midnight, like every other, my AU friends gather round the tv countdown with a glass of champagne. When the ball drops, we sip and go one to the other for a kiss and a hug and a bit of wonder at all the years we've been doing this. The cell phones are lit blue. I call my mother and let her hear the noise of our revelry and our wishing one another happy new year. I quickly tell her happy new year myself and hand the phone to one of my beloved friends who greets her and passes her on to the next.

While my AU friends entertain my teary mother, I step out onto the balcony and into the cold. I have no coat or hat or scarf. I am wearing a silver and feathered tiara. I have a pot and a pan that my hostess has assured me she won't mind a small dent in. I call to the high rises, "Happy New Year" and clang my cooking utensils while the fireworks go off, their brilliant colors reflecting in 20 stories of glass of the co-op down the block. People from other high rises and on the streets call back to me -- "Happy New Year." I hear my echo as it bounces off the building across the street. This is the first moment of the new year as I've known it for most of my life now. I've taken my mother's noise making and calling traditions with me but not her misery and I've found new years with my AU friends.