Bonne Année!!

First of all, Bonne Année à toutes et à tous! Happy New Year to all (male and female, in the French fashion)...and to be typically French, I will include that I especially wish you good health (sûrtout la santé!). New Year is celebrated with more enthusiasm in Paris than just about anywhere on the planet. Anyone who watched the millennium celebrations around the world would have to agree that Paris' were the most spectacular. I was here, and even I--not particularly a New Year's enthusiast--was enormously moved by the spectacle and the feeling in the city.

Once the big night itself has come and gone, each social encounter for about the first month of the year is prefaced with wishes for a happy new year and good health. Every one of the commerçants--my butcher, my baker, my greengrocer, etc.--has shaken my hand with fervent good wishes. This is part of the ritual of Parisian life, and I find it a bit courtly and rather nice.

Since Denis and I had gotten back from the Seychelle Islands late on New Year's Eve, we simply searched for a place where we could have a bite of supper without a reservation for a full gala affair. Neither of us is a big fan of those anyway. We didn't wander far afield because it was terribly cold--not temperature-wise (barely below freezing) but with a bone-chilling north Atlantic-type offog. Having been in 90-degree weather only that morning, it was downright shockingly cold. I don't think I warmed up until yesterday.

We ended up in a terribly overpriced brasserie where we ate mediocre food in an atmosphere of suited men and sequined ladies guzzling champagne and eating oysters and foie gras, the traditional New Year's foods. At the stroke of midnight, the restaurant strobed its lights, and the waiters raced around from table to table wishing the clients happy new year and offering them cigars. Habitués of the brasserie were kissed by the owner, and members of all tables kissed each other. As most of us know, the French have that cheek-kissing thing, and it is absolutely de rigueur to kiss even people you normally wouldn't on New Year's Eve.

One of the things I don't like about New Year's Eve is its sometime air of forced celebration, which often leaves the lonely or otherwise derailed feeling more out of it than usual. The brasserie offered a sad example. Shortly after we arrived, a well-dressed and dressed-up woman was seated across from us. Because French women almost never dine alone, I assumed she was meeting someone. Slender, with short-cropped bright silver hair, she had a strained air, and I was sure she was miffed at whomever at her date for being late, as the witching hour of midnight wasn't far off.

But when I noticed her about ten minutes later, no one had arrived, and she was intently examining a page torn from a magazine. I realized in fact she was alone, but had come to celebrate--if you can call it that--in a place where she was at least recognized. She did receive a kiss from her waiter, who at least called her by name. But he moved on quickly, spurning her as politely as he could, because what she was doing simply isn't done in Paris. Society dictates that if you are so unlucky or uncool as to be a social outcast, you certainly should try to be unobtrusive about it.

I felt terribly sad as I watched her out of the corner of my eye. She was intently examining a page torn from a magazine to impart the appearance of being occupied and enable her to avoid meeting anyone's eyes. Somehow this magazine page made it all worse; it made even me find her pathetic. I wished she would at least have brought a good book, so that her appearance alone in public on New Year's Eve would have had some integrity and honesty instead of looking as if she was trying to pretend she was doing something else.

Denis and I looked at each other, knowing we were feeling the same thing. The lonely lady on top of the overpriced, tasteless food just reinforced our mutual feelings about New Year's Eve, which are that we would rather spend it curled up warm and together at home. One a.m. found us under the covers (deeply under, in my case), regaining our warmth from the cold outside, and looking forward to a lazy New Year's morning, reading in bed and sipping very good coffee, for hours.

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