First Night
First Date

By Jean Reidy

I never went on many New Year’s Eve dates, either while single or married.  Frankly, after kids, “adults only” New Year’s Eves disappeared all together. Not merely endangered like impromptu movies and dinners, December 31st dates were driven to extinction.

 In fact, the last time I had swayed to “Auld Lang Syne,” was the year before our first child arrived.  In a moment of reckless abandon, my husband Mike and I body-crushed through Times Square, with noise makers in hand, endangering life and limb to watch the “Ball Drop.” Ten years, two thousand miles and four children later, I now was embarking on a gentler New Year’s Eve, with a date twenty-eight years younger than myself.  I prayed that Miss Manners was taking the night off.

Patrick, my oldest, had just turned eight.  In a heroic attempt to inject a bit of civility into his Tonka Truck life, I decided to introduce him to fine food and live theater.  I guess I thought that this was what a boy of eight needed.  As though seating him on a velvet cushion would somehow scour the grass stains from the seat of his pants.

 Phantom of the Opera, traveling westward from the Big Apple, appeared like a mirage in Pat’s cultural desert. Unfortunately, “my great idea but weeks too late” call to the ticket office revealed only one night that would fit the family schedule - New Year’s Eve.  So while Mike rang in the New Year with Candyland, popcorn and our three younger three children, I escorted our son on his first date.

My prep time for any date was minimal.  I usually shared personal space with a potty trainer and a bloody nose.  On the big night, I didn’t labor with dress selection or makeup.  After all, this was just my eight-year-old son.

  Pat disappeared into his room, a Lego-building, sweat-suited, bowl-cut boy mumbling, “What do I need to wear?”    I was not prepared for the penny-loafered, sport-coated, gel-haired, junior executive that came bounding down the stairs.

I reached to smooth a lump in his coat pocket and triggered the familiar rattle of Legos.  “Just in case I get bored,” he explained.  Had my cultural crusade failed before we reached the door?  But faster than I could say “Emily Post,” Pat darted to the car. I ducked back into the bathroom for one last mirror check, making sure I looked equal to the roles of both mom and date.

 Our first stop was dinner.  In the last eight years, while I was home befriending Bert and Ernie, Denver had become a metropolis with a night life.  No tables for two were open on this New Year’s Eve.  With stomach screaming and curtain time fast approaching, I pleaded with a maitre’d at a French cafe to seat us.  He kindly succumbed, insisting that we be out by 7:30, when he expected his full house. “No problem,” I promised him, knowing that family dashes through McDonalds had schooled us well in “speed eating.”

We had rehearsed table manners and theater manners.  “Pleases” and “thank yous” rolled from Patrick’s tongue with Pavlovian predictability.   But the napkins folded like pirate hats were too tempting.  As I ordered my salad, Pat discreetly dueled an invisible opponent with a drink pick, while wearing his napkin atop his head. I froze him in place with an icy stare. Then catching my swashbuckler’s remorse-tinged eyes, I faltered in my stare and gave in to the giggles.  Compromise without words.

Patrick’s experiment with fine food failed when he discovered chicken fingers on the kids’ menu.  The closest we came to exotic cuisine was chocolate fondue for dessert.  I cringed watching the mini-fork travel from pot to lips, the trip, laboriously slow, the chocolate dangling from the edge of the melon.  We escaped errant chocolate stains. The only item so christened, was the disheveled white pirate hat, which Pat replaced on the table, from his lap.  Hooray, he had graduated napkin school in one night!

We stepped out of the restaurant and into the Arctic Tundra.  The wind chill on December 31st could stiffen a pair of jeans with one gust.  It whipped our sleeves into a frenzy as we shivered into our coats.  Triple-sleeved, in his parka, Pat’s robotic arms reached up for my hand as we crossed the street.  Without hat or hood, he pulled the collar of his coat up and over his head like a mummy bag.  We jogged the four blocks to the theater, too frigid for words, hand in hand, my headless boy and I.

Eight years ago, an evening equally cold in New York City, we brought him home from the hospital with layers of thick blankets protecting his head.  I regretted not having a hat ready for him that night.  Now guilt, protectiveness, and overwhelming love guided my hand to tug upward a little harder on his zippered head.

After ten minutes that felt like an Everest expedition, we arrived at our refuge.  As we bustled through the doors, the theater enveloped us with warmth and enchantment.  Denver royalty buzzed in the lobby. Champagne flutes chimed.  Exaggerated conversation and laughter harmonized with the distant music.  I’m not sure if it was the sequined dresses or Patrick’s dancing eyes that cast a prismatic reflection throughout the room.

“Who are all these fancy people?” he asked.  I wondered the same.  We weren’t in Kansas anymore.

My date stood among the live mannequins, twice his size.  Their suits a bit more tailored, their hair untouched by the gusts, but their smiles nearly lifeless next to my handsome little man’s.

“The real show is this way, Pat,” I said and ushered him to our seats.

 I chose Phantom not only for its recognizable music, but indeed, for its fear factor, very appealing to a boy of eight.  Or at least, so I thought. I never imagined that the guns cracking, the Phantom cackling and the chandelier swinging would drive this brave boy practically into his mother’s lap.  Mustering courage, he settled for a hand squeeze and continued his love/hate relationship with the performance.

The final curtain brought with it a crush of applause.  Pat joined in, adding his own hoots and hollers, as well as a four-fingered whistle that resembled more of a spit.  He glanced at me, worried.  I glanced back.   Checked over both shoulders.  Then blasted my own patented four-fingered siren.

“Wow, Mom. How’d you do that?” Patrick asked. He studied his fingers, then spat out another toneless “phht.” Smirking with satisfaction, I promised Pat I’d teach him how, when all his teeth came in.

 The lights rose in the theater.  Patrick’s anxious curiosity warranted a quick trip stage side for a closer look at the formidable chandelier. There in his most sophisticated voice, he struck up a conversation with a violinist in the orchestra pit. “I just need to figure out how that thing works,” Pat boldly informed, swallowing any hint of fear in his voice.

The musician nodded understandingly. “I worry about it too,” he said.

Seeing enough to satisfy his sensible mind and ensure a better night’s sleep, Patrick turned his back to fantasy and we headed for home.

Arriving within minutes of midnight, at a house that had been sound asleep for hours, I flipped on a delayed telecast of Times Square.  Over a glass of cold milk, Patrick and I counted down together with Dick Clark. We watched the jubilant chaos unfold. Patrick dreamed aloud, “We should do that some year.”  And just as I was having a nostalgic twinge from a New Year’s so long ago, he added, “I had the best night ever, Mom.” 

So on that New Years night, when I set out to polish and perfect my little diamond in the rough,  I learned that I like life a little rough around the edges.   I’ll leave Pat a few rough edges. They’re etched with tenderness. I’ll leave him some smudges. So that he can laugh at himself. And in the future, when he’s sport-coating, hair-gelling and penny-loafering, I’ll put a Lego in his pocket, if not a warm hat - or even a napkin - on his head, to preserve a wee bit of the little boy, in the young man, in him.

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