"Trees in Love"

The first time I heard Jim Post sing "Trees in Love" I fell off my chair. People say things like that all the time and what they mean is, I laughed really really hard. But I laughed so hard I really did fall off my chair. Really. Then, for years on end, every year on New Year's Eve we listened faithfully to the Midnight Special on WFMT fervently hoping and actually praying to hear "Trees in Love." Some years were good. Some, we had to settle for Woody Allen's riff on the Berkowitz' ("the moose mingled...), "Throw Your Cat Away," "Mooseturd Pie," "I Hate Liver," and Brian Bowers "The Scotsman." Then we moved to Colorado. No more WFMT. Until free internet live streaming. And now I am praying with my eyeballs squeezed real tight and my head bowed all the way to my chest and my hands folded inside out that we'll get to hear "Trees in Love" tonight. At least we get "I Hate Liver." The girls love it. So, this is revenge for Lady Gaga. New Year's Eve's I have known. Parties with a house full of friends, quiet nights with Swan Lake, the first New Year's Eve as a nervous mother who left the babe for all of forty minutes to run down to the corner restaurant and quaff a glass of champagne, nibble at a scrumptious round of baked brie with pinyon and apple before racing back home, to hold Her. Years of games, Trivial Pursuit, Apples to Apples, Scrabble, and noisemakers and movies and concerts. Somehow, thank God, I managed to miss church on New Year's Eve once I'd left my parents' nest and the yearly Moody Science Films and "Watch Services." Actually, one year, in an upstairs room of the church building, a high school boy kissed me at midnight. I was thrilled. And I don't even remember his name. Years we celebrated at 9 p.m. -- the new year, Halifax time, when the girls were little. Years I fell asleep, bored and tired before ten. The year, 1991, when, in San Diego, having carefully calculated the time difference, I stood in awe at noon, tears running down my face, as the flag of the USSR, all red and ruined, its hammer and sickle rusted, was lowered at midnight Moscow time, lowered over the Kremlin for the last time. The year, 2000, celebrating with Beethoven's 9th at the Symphony. So many new years, old years, memories, resolutions. Some kept, many broken, forgotten, neglected, given up. It is now midnight, 2010, over the Sargasso Sea, where the sea turtles whoop and holler. Soon it will be our turn. And the constants, every year: hoping and praying for "Trees in Love" and, yes, artichoke dip. Happy New Year everybody. May your trees, your friends, your families and your own dear hearts know great love this year. Love wins.