When the millenium turned from 1999 to 2000, my husband and I were at a party in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Don’t get it twisted. We weren’t “of” Greenwich. We were just “in” Greenwich.
To be honest, It was probably the fanciest party we’d ever attended. It was thrown by peers who were friends of friends. These friends were peers in age only. In reality, they were sophisticated adults who read deeply and traveled widely. They’d ridden horses at their prep schools. They’d tasted wines in French vineyards. They’d rubbed elbows on the regular with All The Pretty People. Jon and I, on the other hand, were noobs who had to pantomime to each other under the table about which spoon to use for the soup course.
But, I remember that night as vividly as if happened yesterday.
Everyone was panicked about Y2K. Would the world come to an end at midnight? Would our computers still work? Would everyone’s home alarm system stop alerting the police of break ins? Jon joked that if all hell broke loose, at least we were somewhere where the looting would be top notch.
I wore the same dress I wore to our rehearsal dinner two years earlier because: not yet adults. I had one dress that could fit the categories of “fancy” and “dinner.” I think that dress cost me about $59. But it was shiny, and when you are not yet an adult, shiny = fancy.
The hostess had a half dozen Polariods strewn about the house — I learned last night that there is Shiny Fancy and then there is a dozen Polaroids Fancy — and people were popping off random photos at random times, capturing random moments for random posterity. And someone took this photo.
I can’t remember what song was playing, or who even else was dancing, but I do remember that the only place I felt like I belonged that night was right there, in that unexpected and exuberant dip, in our private little world, captured in that private little moment.
I will never not be grateful to the stranger who looked up, saw us, snapped that shot, and then handed it to us, as he (or was it a she?) disappearing away into the dance floor. It was a perfect little nothing of an effort that became one of my prized possessions.
A lot of things have changed since that polaroid was taken. Our lives are bigger, busier, more public. I have more than one fancy dinner party dress. I know what soup spoon to use. There are two more of us in our private little world. Plus a dog who many of you know even better than me (seriously, if you aren’t following me on Instagram for my #dailydober posts, what are you even doing with your life?).
But, that polaroid, which sat for 10 years in a frame on my desk, began to shatter my heart in slow motion as it faded away over the years.
Fifteen years ago, we commissioned an artist to make a painting of the picture. And it is this painting hangs in our bedroom, above our mantle, a place of honor in our private little world.
From time to time, Jon and I get out of sync with one another. Too much work, too much stress, too much pandemic. That painting becomes our true north. It reminds us of who we are. It is our private little home.
Now it’s 2022, and I can’t help but think of all of the times where life has been grand, and also all of the times when I have felt out of sync. Yes, it’s been Jon, and my boys, who have gotten me back on track, but also my friends and my family — my framily — who have provided that private little home, that space to fail, that space to dream, that space to grow.
We each have these fleeting moments of brilliance and love, only sometimes they fade and we forget who we are, and what we were meant to be. In this next year, I don’t wish you the inanity of resolutions for the future, those ill-informed, socially acceptable, mainstreamed ideals — the “look good goals” that “look good” on the wall but mean nothing to you — but rather I wish you the gift of clarity of memory, for who you were when you were at your very best, and who you want to be again and again, as a bridge to who you will become.
What I know now is that we are in control of who we become. What I know now is that there are bits of your future inside your past. What I know now is that it is up to us to grab these bits and hold them tight in those private little world of ours.
And, if your memory of those moments are fading away, I invite you to bring them back into your life and put them in a place of honor. Because it’s your world, your private little world, and only you get to decide what happens next.
