Ringing in the new millennium without Mom
New York at Christmas was Dad’s plan. In an effort to distract my older brother and me from our first holiday season without our mother, who had died just before Thanksgiving, he flew us out of sunny San Diego to the arctic island of Manhattan, where I learned how to wear a beanie unironically.
I was 15 and in love with theater. My brother loved baseball. Mom loved both. So our dad curated a trip to Broadway and Cooperstown’s Baseball Hall of Fame, with the added hope that we might for a moment forget She wasn’t with us.
I was most excited for New Year’s Eve in Times Square. It was Y2K, the end of the world, and I had told everyone in school I was going down in the center of it all. I had just neglected to tell Dad. And on the morning of Dec. 31, 1999, after a week that featured “Annie Get Your Gun” starring Susan Lucci, he tossed us in a rental car, drove us through Times Square, and —
“Where’re we going?” I asked, as the skyline disappeared behind a haze of winter fog.
“Cooperstown,” he said.
My dad was in his 40s when I was born. At close to 60, he had the quiet presence of men of his generation who spent their early 20s on a naval destroyer. I was not quiet. I did theater. We couldn’t have been more different.
“Cooperstown!” I shouted, as if performing to a full house. “For Y2K?”
It was the dawn of a new millennium. I had bragged to my friends about Times Square. My mom had just died. I deserved an epic reset at midnight.
“Times Square will be a mess,” he said. “We’re spending midnight outside the Baseball Hall of Fame.”
I fell silent for the first time in my life. Unless we were shotgunning beer out of Babe Ruth’s mitt, why in the name of Carson Daly was I spending Y2K in the middle of a farm?
“Your mom loved baseball.”
“Mom loved ‘All My Children,’ too. Their studios are on West 66th. We’d at least hear fireworks —”
No dice. We were roaming Cooperstown’s one street by sunset.
I saw a nice restaurant, rose-colored interior, warm light. It looked more special than a museum for a sport I cared little about, and I needed the night to be special.
“No,” Dad said. He didn’t like the look of that restaurant.
I pressed him further, but communication between my dad and me was never great. Dad wasn’t Mom.
Mom dazzled. She charmed. She wore her big personality like a sandwich board. Dad was the soft-spoken straight man, the ever-observing silent supporter.
He wasn’t my favorite. I feared life without Mom because it would have to continue with Dad alone. I had convinced myself he didn’t get me, but really, he was just quiet.
But now we were shouting at each other on a twinklelit Main Street because I couldn’t understand why my dad didn’t want to go inside a restaurant.
We went back to the Best Western and my brother took me to a nearby Pizza Hut. At 20, he was more evolved, and he reminded me of the last-minute tragic nature of the trip. He revealed that we were staying four hours outside New York City because every hotel room in Manhattan was booked.
In happier times, Dad loved to drive, his right side always casually draped on the armrest, left hand on the wheel. Mom never loved that. Too relaxed for her taste, so she’d move the armrest up. On a drive just after she died, I watched Dad lean on the armrest. It was at halfmast. He slammed it down. Then back up. Down again. Back up. It’s the one time I saw him cry.
My brother looked at me over his slice of pepperoni. “I think Dad saw the happy couples in that restaurant and maybe it made him sad.”
I’d spent so much time thinking about how my mom’s death affected me that I never considered that after 30 years, no one was going to move Dad’s armrest up anymore. She wasn’t going to wrap presents with him late into Christmas Eve anymore. She wasn’t going to navigate the winter fog of parenthood with him anymore. And she wasn’t going to sit across from him at a special restaurant on New Year’s Eve anymore.
Cooperstown was the best my dad could offer given the circumstances. It was the first time I understood him.
Midnight approached.
My dad and I made up, and the three of us stood in the quiet darkness outside the Baseball Hall of Fame, holding tight to streamers Mom had bought, struggling to move forward in her absence.
Dad checked his manually set watch. The second hand was closing in on 12.
Tick-tick-tick —
I’ll never know if the moment we entered the new millennium was official or not, but I was going to trust that his time was right.
Tick —
Tick —
“Oh, that was it,” Dad said.
A cow mooed.
We tossed our streamers in unison.
“Happy New Year.”