I still remember New Year’s Eve 1997, my senior year in high school. My boyfriend was in a band, and so we headed to a small all-ages club for a gig he had to play. I was crazy in love with him and already dreading the prospect of having to break up for college, but I was so excited to spend such a momentous evening in a sparkly dress pretending to be a grown-up and watching him perform.
But as we counted down to midnight, I realized (belatedly) that my boyfriend was on stage and I had no one to kiss. As I started to sulk, looking around at all of the embracing couples, a much-older gay man in the crowd took pity on me and, after kissing his own partner, planted a big smooch on my cheek and whispered some sage advice in my ear, “Honey, if you’re the type who expects a kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve, don’t date the guys in the band.”
His words had a huge impact on me, reminding me that you need to know yourself, know your needs, and adjust your expectations. I had expected that my senior year New Year’s Eve would look like something out of a movie – a perfect kiss, a perfect night, a perfect love, something to cling to in the terrifying uncertainty of college and beyond. And instead, I got a lesson in reality and a reminder that life can’t be scripted, that people have their own paths (and sometimes their own stage to perform on), and that I can accept things as they are or work to change them – but that I can’t change other people.
In my case, I realized well before high school graduation that I was not meant to date a boy in a band – although more than 25 years later, we are still close friends and have supported each other through two weddings, a divorce, the births of four children, and deaths of three parents. He is still a professional musician who almost certainly works every single New Year’s Eve – luckily, his wife of 17 years is also a professional musician.
And this month, I celebrate my 13th wedding anniversary with a lawyer who plays guitar and has a wonderful singing voice but has never been in a band and wants nothing more on New Year’s Eve than to eat fancy cheese and drink champagne with me at home in sweatpants. And of course we kiss at midnight – if we manage to stay awake that long.
Despite my inherent cynicism, I genuinely believe that things usually work out the way they are supposed to, even they don’t always align with the way you think they will or the way you want them to in the moment.
If my New Year’s Eve kiss hadn’t taught me this lesson when I was 17, the process of raising my own teenagers certainly would’ve. Obviously it’s not exactly the same – you don’t choose your children, and you can’t break up with them but stay friends – but I definitely had ideas about who my kids would be, what they would achieve, how they would behave. Now, with kids 18 and 12, I acknowledged long ago that they will be their own people, achieve their own goals, behave according to their own internal standards. Their passions are not necessarily my passions; their choices are sometimes inexplicable to me. I hate public speaking; my older kid is the president of Speech & Debate. I can barely manage to update the software on my iPhone when prompted; my younger kid is on the robotics team.
My job, though, is to love them as they are and support them as they grow. I can set boundaries and offer guidance, but I’m not going to change the personalities that came pre-loaded – and I would never, ever want to.
When I reflect on that New Year’s Eve – which was somehow 27 years ago! – I’m grateful that I learned a lesson about letting go of expectations and accepting reality so early in life. Accept the things you cannot change, the saying goes, and change the things you can. And I’d add: Don’t be too stubborn to listen to advice doled out by strangers you meet along the way.
