It’s New Year’s Eve. In the Berkey household this means fondue, tall glasses of sparkling juice, life-long friends, laughter and chatter, and watching the ball drop with some of the people we love most. It’s a party that takes days to get ready for and what feels like months to clean up after. Food spreads across the kitchen counter and tables set up in the dining room. The sound of dice hitting the table and laughter at the end of a good story is heard late into the night. The smell of the fireplace sticks to your clothes long after the party ends, and there’s a warmth in the house that has nothing to do with temperature.
This is how the Berkeys usher in the new year.
But this isn’t the only time in 2014 that a person could find us celebrating. We celebrated March 10, the day we met Finley Sophia. We celebrated May 24, the day Nick and Mary got married. We celebrated Nick and Mary’s graduation from college at the end of July with a trip to Mexico. We celebrated birthdays and anniversaries. We celebrated homecomings and weekends together. We celebrated those rare times Notre Dame Football actually came out with a win.
My family loves to celebrate yet so many days go by with little celebration.
I’m a celebrate-every-moment-you-can kind of person. I get tired of the mundane. Skeptics and cynics steal life from me. I love a good party with the people who I love most. Tonight as I sit around the fondue pots with my brothers and friends, my niece and my parents, the people who have attended our party for years, I’m going to be celebrating 2014. I’m celebrating the final year of college. I’m celebrating the friendships that have lasted another year. I’m celebrating the times I wanted to pull out my hair, those 26.2 miles of the marathon. I’ll be celebrating the good things like the day my niece was born. And I’ll be celebrating the tough things like fear of what’s to come at the end of May.
Because these good and these tough things remind me that I am alive. And that’s worth celebrating.
What are you celebrating from 2014?
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