Eves

Maybe it’s the anticipation.  The not knowing what will happen.  Perhaps it’s the pulse boosting curiosity of what will happen next.  Whatever the reason, I’ve always been a fan of eves.

Sometimes the eve is better than the actual day.  There is so much promise and unknowns during an eve of a big event.  Will you get that prized gift you want on Christmas or your birthday?  Will you be in the same classes as your best friend or secret crush?  Yes, many of our eves revolve around our crushes when we’re young.  On the eve of the big dance will your favorite girl let you slow dance with her?  When you get older, will that same girl say yes?  Eves can also be soul crushing.  They can create hopes and dreams in our feeble minds that are dashed as quickly as we conjured them up.  It’s natures way of letting us know who’s the boss.

Our anticipation of the soon to be or soon to happen changes throughout the years.  As a child, you can barely keep your eyes closed and your mind shut off long enough to fall asleep on Christmas Eve.  The angst is palapable.  And let’s not even touch the eve before the first day of the school year.  Alas, that eve seems to go much too quickly.  As we age these anticipations and the worries about these eves for these days change.

Thanksgiving Eve is notorious for being the event of the year for any 20 or 30 year old back home.  Even if you don’t drink, you do that night.  New Year’s Eve has nothing on Thanksgiving Eve in the sleepy suburbs of Boston.  From far and wide, people seem to creep out from every nook and cranny of the South Shore (south of Boston for those of you from out of town).  It’s not uncommon to see your ex girlfriend from high school trotting out her wealthy banker husband or some other schmuck you know you could beat in an arm wrestling match.  It’s actually worse when you don’t run into an ex flame or other acquaintance.

For some unnerving reason, on Thanksgiving Eve the goal seems to be to go to as many bars as possible as though you are in some advanced state of  alcoholic fueled A.D.D.  Or, maybe you just can’t stand to look at the bartender even one more second.  It is just short of bizarre how people feel the desire to switch locations while drinking, as though the beer will surely taste better at the pub down the street.  Usually, it has more to do with the lack of “opportunities” at one location.  But, I digress.

Of course, the quintessential eve has to be Christmas Eve. You know, the nights that seem to take about a week and a half to pass by when you’re 10.  The excited, unadulterated joy and maybe a little fear assault your senses.  Were you good enough this year?  I remember lying in bed, about as tired as a drugged out meth addict on a sugar high.  Of course, your worries about whether you’ll get the new G.I. Joe (hey I’m a child of the 80s), pale in comparison to the thoughts of anticipation that keep us wired in our older years.

I still miss the nervous, naive hopes and dreams of those eves of long ago.