For auld lang syne

I always wanted to be in New York City for New Year's Eve. Times Square looked like the top of the world from our living room, where my family spent the holiday watching the ball drop on television before unceremoniously going to bed.

I longed, back then, to be anywhere but where I was - miles from the nearest town, and the nearest person my age. I was lonely on that farm from the moment I arrived, a little bundle of ambiguity from an orphanage in the city. I never felt at home or welcome there, but taken in and tolerated, a constant reminder of great loss for two people who desperately wanted but could not have children of their own.

New Year's Eve was a quiet non-event in our living room, the only warm room in our house since we always lived in a perception of near-poverty and therefore had to conserve our propane. We would have dinner at 6 p.m. like always, then later a little dish of ice cream before brushing our teeth, putting on our pajamas and settling in for yet another evening silently staring at television.

We didn't always bury ourselves in television. There was a time we played Yahtzee in the evenings, or Canasta with three decks of cards. My father even taught us how to play chess and five-card stud, but somewhere around the time I was no longer a little girl yet not big enough to flee, those games became unbearable for the bits of truth they revealed in a family choked by repression and denial. Television helped us escape one another's presence. It took my folks' minds out of their lives and kept them away from painful feelings they couldn't acknowledge. It gave me a brief respite from the firing line of their frustrations, but it also filled my head with images that made me ashamed of my own life.

Families on television lived in modern houses with built-in closets and heat in every room. TV girls my age had their own telephones and friends down the street they could visit anytime they wanted. When they were sad or frustrated, their TV parents would patiently draw them out and say something to make them feel wonderful again. TV daughters weren't informed they didn't have a right to feel sad, and they should just appreciate having a roof over their heads and something to eat, as if that could be taken away at any moment.

TV wasn't real and I knew it, but it doesn't matter how much you know in your head when your heart yearns to be far away from where you are. I was in a place separated from the rest of the world, both physically and emotionally. I had no place to go except a hayfield, and no one to talk to save a God who never answered. It was the loneliest place on earth, especially on New Year's Eve.

On New Year's Eve, live pictures of thousands of people celebrating and laughing in Times Square came right into our living room. These were interspersed with vignettes of people dancing and drinking champagne in dark clubs filled with confetti rain. All of this I took in, wrapped in a blanket on a couch in life on what seemed like another planet.

This year, I was in New York City for New Year's Eve, about a 40 minute walk from Times Square. I did not go there. I did not go to a dark club filled with confetti rain. I had the flu, so I stayed home. And watched TV.

Sunday, January 3, 1999

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.