I received this photo last night from my mother at 11:50pm, EST, which I took to mean my parents failed to ring in the new year from a vertical posture, or party like it’s 1999. (Neither will get the reference, but given their headgear, I couldn’t resist a nod to The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.)
I’m also guessing, with no data or research to make my guess remotely educated, that many of you also packed it in early. Am I right? If so, what pray tell, did you do, instead? Why weren’t you dancing at midnight and swilling Champagne at some fancy club? Have you simply outgrown it? Were you dissuaded by the weather? Do you fear the wanton behavior of rank amateurs in the bars and on the roads, or, like me, did you find the prospect of crashing on the sofa by a roaring fire and watching It’s a Wonderful Life simply too hard to resist?
Unlike me, at least my parents got out of their apartment. Shortly before they retired for the evening, they played a rousing game of Bingo at The Home. My mother was victorious and returned with a pretty elaborate charcuterie board, which I’m told made for a delicious breakfast. Now, they’re headed off to brunch, followed by another shuffleboard tournament, which will blend seamlessly into another early dinner at McHenry’s, or possibly The Oak Room, or maybe The Acorn. Whatever other challenges may await them in the coming year, I won’t have to worry about either of my parents starving to death. At Oakcrest, every day is a moveable feast, with multiple restaurants vying constantly for the attention of two thousand elderly residents, many of whom eat as if they’re filled with tape worms. 
Apropos of nothing, re-reading A Moveable Feast is among my resolutions in the coming year. Hemingway’s terrific memoir details his life as a struggling writer in Paris. The title comes from a quote in a letter he wrote to his friend, A.E. Hotchner: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
It should be said that Aaron Hotchner was also a hell of a writer. The two men met in 1948 while Hotchner was on assignment for Cosmopolitan and became fast friends. In fact, it was Hotchner who wrote the best-selling 1966 memoir, Papa Hemingway, but he’s probably most famous for living to 102, and collaborating with Paul Newman. Talk about a legacy. Together, they co-founded Newman’s Own, as well as the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in 1988, a residential summer camp for sick kids. In fact, their book, In Pursuit of the Common Good, is an absolute must read for anyone with a passing interest in philanthropy, food, or entrepreneurship. Reading it inspired me to double down on mikeroweWORKS, which I resolved to do on New Year’s Day fifteen years ago, back when I decided to stop pretending the “common good” was a thing I could ignore forever.
But I digress. Last night, as my parents clung to their charcuterie board and lounged around like royalty, I was enjoying a combination of leftovers 3,000 miles away, seldom seen on the same plate. 
Crab claws from The Bering Sea, Italian sausages from Olympia Provisions, and Saag Paneer from the sub-continent. The Cabernet is a 2000 Elivette, which normally sells for $360 a bottle, but showed up a few days ago on Last Bottle for just $39. (Score!) As a matter of principle, I never pay more than $40 for a bottle of wine, but I’ll drink the expensive stuff whenever it’s on sale, and the sales on Last Bottle are extraordinary. In fact, sipping the Elivette last night made me appreciate “It’s a Wonderful Life” more than usual. Specifically, the moment when the snow was falling in Bedford Falls, as George Bailey stands on the bridge where he had contemplated suicide an hour before, praying that God would rescue him from the alternative universe where Clarence, his Guardian Angel, had taken him to experience a world where he had never been born. A world where he knew everyone, but no one knew him.
I understand why it airs on Christmas, but does anyone really think It’s a Wonderful Life is a Christmas movie? I guess in a world where Diehard is also considered “Christmas programming,” anything is possible, but to me, Capra’s masterpiece is a horror movie. Albeit a horror movie with a happy ending, but only after George survives a crucible of a nightmare. Never mind the grim transformation of Bedford Falls to Pottersville – that’s scary, but way too broad to be terrifying. No, the real terror comes when George realizes what his mother has become in a world where he was not her son. The look on his face says it all. And again, at the cemetery, when George realizes his little brother didn’t grow up to become a famous war hero because George wasn’t there to save him from drowning as a child. And most of all, when George learns that his beloved wife is a broken, hopeless, unhappy spinster – the complete opposite of the woman he married.
“Mary!” he screams. “Mary! Don’t you know me, Mary?”
It’s the most desperate line in the film, uttered at the precise moment George realizes the devastating impact of his absence on the person he loves most of all. Proving the inescapable truth of Clarence’s earlier line, that sums up the entire movie.
“Strange, isn’t it? How each man’s life touches so many other lives? When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
This morning, as I sip my coffee and look out into the impenetrable fog bank outside my kitchen window, the metaphor is hard to miss. What will the new year bring, and what will I bring to it? The former is unknowable but will
likely include a long list of global calamities, national disasters, economic uncertainty, political turmoil, and local drama far beyond my ability to control. So, I’ll focus instead on the latter, and do my best to avoid a visit from Clarence. This year, I will try, once again to take nothing for granted, especially the people I love, the people I like, the people I have not yet met, and those I never will. In other words, the people whose absence might leave behind an awful hole.
Here’s to you and your loved ones, and to the year ahead, and to your own moveable feast, wherever it may take you. And here’s to outliving A.E. Hotchner!