I remember the snowflakes, I remember the wine

"New Year's Eve sucks. It's amateur night," was my friend Brandon's explanation. "Every place is packed with people who normally never go out, and they have no idea what they're doing."

It's a good line, but I don't know if it actually has much to do with why I've mostly stopped celebrating New Year's. Most years, nowadays, I end up just staying home. One year I went to bed ten minutes before midnight.

I have a few other hypotheses. Maybe it's that there have been too many disappointments - all kinds of hype and buildup followed by inevitable letdown? Perhaps I never cared all that much about it to begin with? Or, could it be that I know that it will never again be as great as it was that year?

That year was 1999, and, in the words of Tricky, pre-millennium tension had been with us for years. The media hounding us with the Y2K bug; nutcases making end-of-the-world predictions; besserwissers pointing out that the new millennium really starts in 2001; people making restaurant reservations years in advance.

I was living in Philly - a year-and-a-half out of college - visiting Sweden for the holidays, and decided to spend New Year's Eve with the family at my aunt Barbro and uncle Göran’s house. (When you’re in your mid-20s, New Year’s with the family is not the obvious choice.) We had some great food and a couple of bottles of wine and the topic of conversation turned to “Dad’s birthday wine.”

Nearly twelve years earlier, for his 40th birthday, my dad had bought himself an expensive bottle of wine. Dad had always been interested in wine but we’ve never had the funds to act on it beyond making wine a staple of weekend dinners. Mostly wines that would now be in the $10 range, which made the purchase of a 1982 Penfolds Grange a splurge beyond imagination.

At our New Year's dinner, we were all having such a great time that dad decided it was time to open the Grange! The bottle was at our home but that didn’t stop him and mom from going home and fetching it. When they returned I had the first great wine experience of my life. I had no idea that wine could taste like this! I don’t have the words to describe it; I certainly did not then. What I remember is that it had layers upon layers and a finish that stayed for minutes. Drinking that seventeen year old bottle marked the beginning of my life-long love of wine.

Dad enjoying his bottle of Penfolds Grange

After dinner we walked to the town square where they were putting on a millennium celebration with a stage and local singers performing. While we were waiting for the countdown it started snowing. And not just a regular snowfall but those really big flakes that fall so slowly that they almost seem to hang still in the air, as if not wanting to hit the ground. I ran into several friends and one of my elementary school teachers. It felt like the whole town had gathered. When the clock struck midnight we popped a bottle of Champagne that we’d brought, poured everyone a glass, and welcomed the future. In that one moment everything seemed perfect.

Urban, Gunilla, Göran, Barbro, Per, Dad and I shortly after midnight

After my dad’s funeral last year we spoke fondly of that night. Someone had the idea that we should get another bottle of Grange and open it for New Year’s Eve in dad’s memory. Exactly seventeen years after that night my mom, aunt, uncle, sister and husband celebrated New Year’s Eve in my childhood home, and I opened a newly purchased Grange. It was excellent and I think my dad would have liked it.

Age 44: Learning to Travel

I’m sitting at the gate at the airport in Phoenix. My two boxes of wine are checked, I’m through security and it couldn’t have been smoother.

I’ve realized that I’m not as experienced a traveler as I thought. Or, more accurately, I’m more rooted in being an on-a-shoestring-traveler than I’d previously realized. So much so that taking advantage of hotel bell services almost feels like an immoral act.

The first time I went anywhere by plane was when I came to the US when I was 18. Before that, nearly all my vacations had been by car or train and we’d either stayed at a camping site or a hostel. When I first began staying at actual hotels I would never let anyone help me with my luggage. I can carry my own bags and why would I waste my money on such an unnecessary luxury? Similarly, I never buy popcorn in a movie theater. Even though I can easily afford it, it’s deeply ingrained in me that this is an overpriced frivolity to be avoided. We can make popcorn at home for a small fraction of the cost!

When I arrived yesterday at the hotel with two wine boxes that would be impossible for me to carry at the same time, it never crossed my mind that there would be staff there to help me. Brandon and I pulled up and asked if we could leave the car outside while we carried two boxes to my room, and the person at the bell desk said “we have carts and we can take them to your room.” What a revelation! Then, as they dropped the boxes in my room I asked about next morning: “Can I come pick up one of these carts for when I check out?” The in-retrospect-obvious answer: “Just call the bell desk and we’ll come get them for you!”

When I got to the airport shuttle bus that my company had arranged (there were 8-10 of us leaving at the same time) the coordinator noticed my boxes and immediately said “let me call ahead to the airport so someone will meet you with a cart.” When we got to the airport, not only did a woman stand there with a cart at the ready, she also followed me in, pushing the cart, until I’d dropped the boxes at the check-in desk.

And so an inconvenient ordeal turned into smooth sailing. Simply by allowing myself to take advantage of existing services. And realizing that they aren’t sinful for ordinary people like me.