Then I went to Elizabeth Street to get a second piercing in my right earlobe. I had the idea for months, and it nagged at me up until the clock was running out on 2022. I suppose I wanted a physical token of the year to take into the next, a memento that wasn’t a wrinkle.
Around 4 p.m., John and I, newly pierced, ate the caviar on blinis while listening to Judy Clay and William Bell. Then we ordered a pizza from Tappo, played three games of gin rummy and watched four episodes of “Slow Horses.” At midnight we heard the yells from Times Square, 20 blocks north of us, clinked glasses and went to bed around 1 a.m.
I was really tired the next morning. It turns out that I’m not the kind of woman who loves eating caviar if it entails staying up after midnight. I vacuumed the living room, listened to “Irish Sundays” on WFUV and stared at the Christmas tree for awhile. Energy and anticipation started to build as we readied for the wedding of our close friend Marc Cohn. With only family and us in attendance, he was marrying Lisa Berg at their apartment on Riverside Drive at 4:30 p.m. on the seventh anniversary of their first date, New Year’s Day 2016.
John and I sang “Let It Be Me” to the luminous couple as they stood under the huppah in the living room and the sun set over the Hudson River in the enormous picture window behind them. In their vows they mentioned that the “glass-half-empty man had found his glass-half-full woman,” and I recognized myself and John in that. No judgment. My half-full needs his half-empty as much as the reverse.
I love and long for occasions that demand unequivocal optimism — where half-full meets half-empty. I love a ritual that is bound by memory and time. The calendar may be arbitrary, but there is meaning in a white dress and veil, a groom who chokes up and the mighty Hudson shimmering with pink and gold, glasses full, sparkle and glow, on a New Year’s Day.
— Rosanne Cash
Kyle Berger is a photographer in Toronto.
Rosanne Cash is a singer, songwriter and author. Her most recent album is “She Remembers Everything.”
Kashana Cauley, a former staff writer for “The Daily Show,” is the author of the novel “The Survivalists.”
Alexander Chee is the author of the novels “Edinburgh” and “The Queen of Night” and the essay collection “How to Write an Autobiographical Novel.”
Rayne Fisher-Quann is the writer of the Substack newsletter Internet Princess.
Andy Miller is the author of “The Year of Reading Dangerously” and the co-host of the podcast “Backlisted.”
Jack Nicas is the Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times, covering Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Motoko Rich is the Tokyo bureau chief for The Times, where she covers Japanese politics, society, gender and the arts, as well as news and features on the Korean Peninsula.
