Playing possum so fate is not tempted to squash hopes

Here is one thing of which I can be certain: on Monday night, out there in our vast native bush lands, there will be no wild animals proposing a toast to welcome in the New Year.

That’s because what separates the wild things from humans are, first, their lack of opposable thumbs and therefore an inability to comfortably hold awine glass and, secondly, their complete lack of need for constructing a narrative. Possums and wetas have no use for a New Year, or a party to mark it.

We humans need narrative. We search everywhere for stories, particularly for their beginnings and ends which help us, somehow, to muddle through their middles.

This is why we invented calendars with weeks and months and years, and whipped up weekends, an entirely artificial construct which lets us trick ourselves into thinking something is finished so we can take a breath and reset and then trick ourselves again into believing something new has started. You run, you stop, you catch your breath and then, more or less refreshed, jog off again into the future.

We especially like to farewell one year and welcome the next, as though they are a living, breathing thing with their own personality. It was a good year, we say, or one we’re glad to see the back of. See you later. Next.

Being certain that possums and wetas aren’t joining us in counting down to midnight on Monday may be the only thing I can state with any confidence. It is fair to say that whenever I feel sure about something, the universe appears to find it amusing to whip that rug of certainty out from under my feet.

By five o’clock on Christmas Eve, I was ready for Christmas. This is unusual – most years, I am ready for Christmas about halfway through Boxing Day. I was genuinely surprised to discover I had done all the things I had hoped to do, and started ticking off things I’d never imagined I would get to. I wrote a long and happy letter to my friend on the other side of the world, trilling merrily about how relaxed I felt. I phoned old friends to wish them Merry Christmas, and to describe my current state of serenity and contentment.

So, naturally, by 8pm I was at A&E with my father whose doctor had phoned to say the results of his tests had arrived and he needed to be admitted to hospital immediately. Shortly after that phone call, my 6-year-old niece, excited about visiting us from Wellington, dashed through our house and slammed headfirst into a closed glass door. I offered to take her to the hospital to have her checked for concussion – I was going there anyway – but her parents correctly assessed that her tiny head was more robust than my safety glass.

We are all fine. I forgot to make the trifle on Christmas Eve, and forgot to add the jam when I whipped it up on Christmas morning but, other than that, we have muddled on through. The glazier has been. Bottles of champagne remain undrunk (designated sober driver for hospital visits) and ready for New Year’s Eve. Though I have nothing to say about this last year as it leaves and to the next as it arrives except, ‘‘Fate, I will not tempt you’’.

I shall be a possum or a weta, though grateful for opposable thumbs which I will wrap around awine glass. All I amprepared to say at this point is, ‘‘Cheers’’.