I made a few huffy puffy sounds that were neither confirmations nor rebuttals.
"Thought so," she said. "I could tell from your blog."
"I think you'll find," I said with as much dignity as I could muster, "that every point I made in the last blog post was a genuine one, and meant from the heart, thankyou very much."
"About new days and all that jazz? Sure, but you spent New Year on your own, right? You could tell. It's nothing to be ashamed of. I spent it watching television with Dan and arguing about how we never do anything exciting on New Year, which is exactly what we do every New Year, so I don't think that's much better."
"New Year," I declared firmly, "is hyped up and....". Tara looked at me on the webcam as if she would raise one eyebrow if she could (she can't). I gave up. "Yeah, I was on my own. I'm broke and everybody's off skiing. It sucked."
"Aw," Tara said: sympathetic now that I'd crumbled and confessed to being a loser. "We could have spoken last night instead. I'd have just made Dan turn the tv down."
"I turned my computer off and read Great Expectations instead," I shrugged. "And had a bath and ate cheesecake. It was alright actually."
There was a pause while my sister concentrated on looking sorry for me.
"Seriously, it was good," I insisted. "Honestly." And - honestly - it kind of was. Today is my first New Year's day without a hangover in at least ten years.
"Alright," Tara sighed unconvincingly. "But I wish you'd said something. It would have made me feel so much better to know that your New Year sucked more than mine did."
As I said goodbye - still giving my sister the finger - it occurred to me that New Year is about hoping for better, and my family is the one area of my life that I will never have to do that. Wherever I go in the world, I have people who see straight through me and my nonsense, and aren't afraid to call me on it.
And that, as far as I'm concerned, makes every year a good one.
Posts
