Woo, Hoo! Got a Date for New Year’s Eve

My hope is that times have changed enough that single women no longer feel like outcasts if they don’t have a date for New Year’s Eve. The best part of being married to Dennis is that we don’t even need to pretend we have plans for the evening of December 31, 2009 – other than going out for an early dinner at Jumbo Seafood in Newton Centre or the Village Smokehouse in Brookline Village. It’s likely I’ll spend at least a portion of the evening cleaning our condo for the brunch guests we’re having on New Year’s Day.

But I have vivid memories of the times when I felt too mortified to tell anybody other than my closest women friends that I had no real plans for what often gets billed as the biggest date night of the year -- either before or after Valentine’s Day. There were also times when I was happier to have a New Year’s Eve date than the experience actually warranted. In that spirit I recount some previous New Year’s Eve dates:

1968 I was home in New York after finishing up my first semester at the University of Pittsburgh. My date was my childhood friend, Bonnie Merzer. I think she and I watched television and had a dinner of take-out fried chicken. The evening’s big source of excitement was witnessing her parents and another couple go off in their Cadillac for what I imagined was a night of dinner and dancing. Her mother looked very glamorous in her sparkly outfit and glittery shoes with heels just high enough not to have her towering over her husband, a dentist forever experimenting with new diets.

1971 A senior at B.U., I headed back to school before winter break was over to join Jerry, a tall, debonair psychiatrist 10 years my senior, and the man who became my husband 8 months later. A lover of classical music, he was thrilled to put his hands on tickets for a New Year’s Eve performance of Handel’s Messiah at Symphony Hall. At the risk of sounding like a philistine, I confide that I sat through the entire concert praying it would soon be time to go home.

1990 Now a widow, I had a date with myself. Knowing that things had to get better because I had a blind lunch date scheduled for early January, I bought a split of Champagne. With only the shadows for companionship, I watched television and toasted myself a better 1991.

1991 Disheartened by the type of men I was meeting at the many singles dances I’d attended throughout the Greater Boston suburbs, I had begun taking dancing lessons. Jitterbugging was my favorite, and I was relieved when a man I knew from the dance scene asked me if I wanted to go dancing with him on New Year’s Eve. Knowing my interest in him was purely Platonic and very short-term, I salved my conscience by insisting that we go Dutch.

1994 The hernia surgery I’d had just before Christmas made it painful to get in and out of a car. Not that the pain stopped me from driving to Boston’s Financial District to a dance club with a reportedly lively singles scene. A widower named Anthony gave me his business card, and I put it inside my Ferragamo pump. I had told him where I work, enabling him to charm a receptionist into giving him my home phone. What did I care? This culminated in the all-important New Year’s Eve date. Declining an invitation to celebrate at his home, and relieved that he was unable to get tickets for the Boston Pops, I enjoyed dinner followed by jitterbugging at his country club.

1995 Dennis, recently widowed and still very sad about the loss of his first love, Fran, joined me for what would turn out to be the first of many quiet New Year’s Eve dinners. I can’t remember what I cooked, but I remember him arriving with Champagne and chocolates. He became my husband in March of 2000, and thank goodness we still have each other.