New Year’s Eve is meant to be memorable night but I don’t remember that many of mine. I wish I could google them. 1984 New Years Me What did I do? We rely on Google now for so much. Why not that?

There’s pressure to make it a great night but it’s usually just another night. What’s the big deal? (But it is a big deal.) Happy New Year. A kiss. A roomful of kisses. Asleep. Awake. Another year…

And yet. And yet, some of these nights I remember sort of. Or can reconstruct from one or two images…

1969, I was only 11 years old and my father let my sister, a friend, and me have sips of champagne. It was the end of the sixties and we thought we were drunk listening to Janis Joplin records waiting for the ball to drop on television.

Early 1970’s: I remember watching  Veronica Lake in "I Married a Witch," in the TV room of a camp-friend’s house in Roslyn, Long Island, waiting until midnight so that, finally, we could go to bed.

In high school, there was a party at the elegant home of a classmate on Central Park West. Later there was pizza at Tom’s Pizza on Columbus Avenue, "This Will Be" by Natalie Cole on the jukebox.

Another year — also high school — "Day for Night" by Truffaut at the Carnegie Hall Cinema and later a hockey game at Madison Square Garden (is it possible there was a hockey game on New Year’s Eve?). The midnight moment at a restaurant, also on Columbus Avenue, and then drinks with some friends in a bar (could we get drinks in a bar?).

During college, New Year’s Eve at "Alice’s Restaurant" in the Berkshires (or a restaurant owned by that Alice) with my mother and sister. Ran into a friend of mine from elementary school who had, inexplicably, become an airplane pilot. We went cross-country skiing the next day for the only time in my life.

In 1979, a childhood friend who’d married a Palestinian man had a party in her Los Angeles apartment. There was a belly dancer and middle-eastern food. At midnight, everyone hooted and yelled and danced a circle around the belly dancer, while drinking paper cups of champagne.

New Year’s 1980, I was in the social room of an Israeli kibbutz feeling exhilarated — being so far from home and feeling sad — being so far from home in a room full of people I barely knew dancing to Madonna Blondie, Bruce Springsteen, Beatles’ and Israeli rock ‘n roll.

Another year, I attended a party in an artsy townhouse on East 11th Street. After midnight,  the party guests walked down to Tribeca and party-hopped from one weird and unwelcoming loft party to another; it was a freezing cold night.

1986: I met David Duchovny — this was before he was the star of "The X-Files," before he was even a professional actor — at the apartment of a friend, who knew him from Yale. I’d just cut my hair short for the first time and
was feeling very festive, very chic. We talked for a while, our fathers were friends in college and we’d met as young children. I don’t remember much else about the party.

1987 was my first New Year’s on Husband’s family farm in Northern California. We attended a party given by a local chapter of the American University Women’s Association held in someone’s home and played a party word game invented by Husband’s grandmother.

In 1988, we’d spent a beautiful day at the Arboretum in San Francisco and drove home after dark. Sitting in the car in the garage of Husband’s childhood home, Husband asked me to marry him. We just sat there stunned, excited, unsure what the hell we were doing. That was New Year’s eve, I think. Maybe the day after. We didn’t tell anyone until we were back in New York.

Another year we went to a dinner theater in Stockton and saw the play:
"A My Name is Alice." Some years we played scrabble, Monopoly. One year
we watched "Like Water for Chocolate" and fell asleep before it was
over, well before midnight.

There were other New Year’s Eves. Obviously. When Son was six months old we were too tired to do anything more than eat dinner and go to bed. Google: 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 New Year’s Eve, what did we do?

1996, we stayed in New York because I was pregnant with daughter and went to see "The People Vs. Larry Fink" on West 23rd Street and ate dinner at the Empire Diner.

1997: Daughter was just 10 months but would be walking within weeks…

In the millennial year, Husband’s family gathered on the farm for a lamb feast prepared by Husband and an enormous Jeroboam of champagne bought in Napa Valley for the occasion. We watched the rest of the world’s elaborate festivities on television and waited for something terrible to happen (Y2k). Father, Sister, Mother: everyone called from New York to wish us a happy new year at 9 p.m. – California time. We’d bought fireworks at a firehouse in Salida, a nearby town, and at midnight shot them off in the backyard which was decorated with lumanaria. The children lit sparklers and spelled their names in the air.

New Year’s Eve dinner on the farm in 2001: Son told "Guy Walks Into A Bar" jokes that had everyone in hysterics, he was only 10. We’d flown nervously cross-country as it was just months after 9/11 and we were still limping (emotionally) barely recovered, full of stories of what had gone on…

2002, 2003: late dinners, rented movies, sparklers in the backyard.

2004: it was just days after the Tsunami, the house was cold, we were all getting sick, what a depressing New Year’s. After mid-night, Son and I watched "Garden State" on his iBook, it had just come out on DVD and was, at that moment, his favorite movie of all time.

I loved it too.