For a truly hype night, bring on the Onion Dip

New Year's Eve is one of those nights that is supposed to be a really big deal, full of champagne and fancy parties and being dressed up and fabulous.   Friends will make clever toasts, everyone in the ballroom will laugh a lot, and there is an off chance that your best friend will show up and propose.

In reality, I find it's a night that rarely lives up to the hype*. Restaurants jack up prices. Bars are slammed with desperately eager fun-seekers. The amateur drunks hit the roads. Hundreds of thousands of crazy people deliberately stand around freezing their collective asses off to watch the clock strike twelve with strangers.

I don't get it.

My kind of New Years Eve involves very little hype. I've had wonderful celebrations that ended at 9:30 pm so our toddlers could turn in, cozy nights at a local bistro with my husband, evenings with cracked crab and vintage wine in a friend's home, pajama parties with my cousin and my sister listening to Casey Kasem counting down the biggest hits of the year, and a memorable turn-of-the-millennium getaway where all but one of the guests came down with the plague at the same time. It was a like a bad British farce, with vomiting, and we still talk about it to this day with some degree of fondness.

Truly, you don't need a glittering disco ball falling from the sky or a big band in tuxedos to usher in the new year. Just grab your friends, open a good bottle of booze, share a great meal, then curl up on the couch or play a rousing game of Celebrity. Toast each other, reflect a bit, vow to be better, and kiss someone you love as the night grows quiet.

Of course, if you still need it to feel like a big, hyped up party, kick the evening off with a bowl of chips and this killer onion dip.

All the truly hype parties come with onion dip.

Best Buds

Ever since my son left elementary school, he and his friends from those days have had an annual tradition of gathering at our house on Superbowl Sunday.  In the early years, the parents came and hung out, too.  We'd be in the kitchen catching up, and the kids would be piled onto couches down the hall. Later on, the boys would be dropped off, clutching a two liter bottle of Sprite and a bag of Doritos to contribute.  They'd cheer and yell at the game and the commercials, run out every once in a a while to refill their bowl from the snack table, play a massive game of touch football at halftime, and generally have a total ball.

Some of the crew, in 5th grade.

At first, the boys were still seeing each other fairly frequently despite being spread out over the city at different middle schools, but as time went on, this became the one day each year that everyone would get together.  Despite each and every one of them towering over me, with their deep voices and facial hair, come February, it was like no time had passed at all for me, or for them.

Six years later

Knowing that almost all of them are now seniors, and will soon be scattering even father apart, I assumed this year's event would be even more of a memorable reunion.   I began pestering my son for details.

Me:  So, have you sent out the invite for your Superbowl party yet?  

Him:  No.

Me:  Oh. OK.  Well, we've been invited somewhere else but I said no.  I was thinking of making you guys some homemade soft pretzels, since everyone loved the pretzel dogs so much that time.  Do you think we should bring back the cookie dough dip, too?  And the wings?  They plowed through the wings last year.

Him:  Um...

Me:  I can't believe this'll be the last one. Wow. 

Him:  Can we talk about this later?

Later:

Me:  OK, what is going on?

Him:  Mom, my friends are all mostly 18 now.  They want to go to parties where they can drink and watch the game, and I don't want them doing that here.  So, let's just skip it, OK?

Me: [Dying a little inside] Oh. Right. Got it.

[Pause]

Good choice, good choice.

So, when I was hanging out with the parents in the kitchen at someone else's house, and the beer commercials came on, I got choked up and more than a little teary as the lyrics played:

'Cause you only need the light when it's burning low

Only miss the sun when it starts to snow

Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low

Only hate the road when you're missing home

Only know you love her when you let her go

Not because of the adorable puppy crawling through the fence*, but because of how the brand behind those gloriously maned horses, and all of its brethren, impacted what were supposed to be lifelong friendships.

Best Buds, indeed.

Cherry Blossom Picnics - A memory for Mother's Day

My birthday is in the springtime, mostly. Sometimes it is a cold, chilly day, or a hot blue one, but more often than not the afternoon is barely but definitely warm. We are in the blue Volvo, braids tight and socks folded down over our matching Mary Jane shoes…the white ones, because summer is coming. Dad is driving, and Mom is quiet but smiling a little, because we are almost there and she has a plan in her mind that is coming true.

The car is parked, somehow (I don’t remember that part), and we are on bicycles. Mine wobbles a bit, and I am trying my best to avoid steering myself into the water, the way the bike wants to go. Dad has the picnic on the back of his bike, keeping an eye on my sister with training wheels scooting along. Mom is walking across the grass in another direction, but she is not lost.

We circle the path, and above us are millions of petals, an impossible shade of pink-white, bursting from gnarled branches in a riotous, splendid show. It’s amazing and yet it is exactly what I expect, because my birthday is when the cherry blossoms come out, every year.

It is crowded here. Tourists are taking pictures, people are walking home from work, other children and parents are playing, and cyclists are passing through. A memorial in marble, usually the main attraction, is the backdrop. And all of us are reflected again in the shiny surface of the basin that we are riding around.

Mom has laid out the scratchy wool blanket. I put my kickstand down and run to see, the dirt from my shoes getting onto the blanket. It’s there. The small, round bowl with the Saran wrap on top, next to the big wooden bowl full of Ruffles (it is always Ruffles) waiting for me to go first. We surround it, us four, but my chip is ready and in there before anyone else’s.

Clam dip. Smooth and cream cheesy and slightly fishy, in an oddly approachable way, and tangy-onion-lemony. My mom’s recipe. My favorite. Made just for me, always, on my birthday.

I’m 48 now. My mother is gone. I make the dip on ordinary days. And yet, at the first taste on my chip (it is almost always Ruffles), I feel my mom loving how happy I am.  I see cherry blossoms, the back of my Dad’s bike ahead of me, and my sister’s small Mary Janes furiously pedaling along under a fluffy pink-white sky.