This is the Personal Narrative I wrote for my English 101 class. I'm very proud of it so I thought I'd share it.
“Mom, I really don’t feel like doing anything tonight. It’s just New Year’s Eve. It comes around every year!” I complained.
“I know, but personally I’m glad to get rid of 2008. It was a bad year. Actually, I was thinking of going down to the church party. Do you think you could bear to do that and come with me?”
“I guess.”
As I dragged on a new pair of jeans and got ready for the long night ahead of me I couldn’t get it out of my head why I just wasn’t in the mood to celebrate the New Year with everyone else in the world. It would be like every other new year before it. Everyone plays games, eats junk food, and then fifteen minutes before midnight, gathers to simultaneously countdown from ten to zero and shout as if the whole world needs to hear you: “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Nevertheless, I forced myself to do this for my mom. She needed the company. She and the Church weren’t getting along so well at the moment. So, going against my will, I started putting on my makeup in order to be presentable for my oh-so-fun night ahead of me.
“It’ll be fine,” I told myself as we walked through the doors of our ward building. “You’re here for mom. This is making her night and she needs that.”
“Hey Mom look, they’re playing Bunko in the primary room. We could go do that.” It didn’t sound like such a bad idea. Bunko is an exciting and fun game. I would have to teach her how to play, but it is worth it, I thought to myself.
“Oh! Oh! Bunko! Bunko!” is the most common phrase I heard for the next two hours. By this time I couldn’t believe that we had been playing for so long! I was actually having fun.
“Well Honey, do we want to go somewhere else?”
“I don’t care. We’ve got an hour. Where do we want to be when the clock strikes twelve?” I inquired, hoping that it wasn’t any place where there would be a ton of people. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun playing Bunko with the fifty odd people there, but I was tired of the public scene. “Honestly, I think it would be cool to go somewhere that would mean something, and where there aren’t a whole lot of people.”
We de¬cided to ask around to find out what spots were the favorites of the crowd. No one really had any good ideas that were close enough. Go figure. When you live on the outskirts of a town with about 5,000 people there isn’t really anything that special close enough. Finally, we got a suggestion. The old Grist Mill. Its fifteen minutes out of town, and out in the middle of the country where there are mostly trees and not a lot of people. Of course! That would be a neat place to go. It’s simple, yet it sits on the edge of a small cliff with the Cedar Creek down below. That wouldn’t be a bad place.
Fifteen minutes until the only midnight celebrated every 365 days, we climbed into my little Honda and headed off towards our final destination. Two rights, two lefts, and a lot of curvy road in between. Time started running out. It was a little farther than we expected it to be. I stepped on the gas a little more, forcing the speedometer from 50 to 55 miles an hour. “Oh please let us get there safely and in time,” I pleaded to myself as I tapped the brakes around yet another foggy corner. With a minute to spare, we reached the covered bridge and leapt out. “Whoosh!” All of a sudden the noise of a full creek invaded my eardrums. It was no longer a creek, but a small river with water rushing by as if it were late in meeting up with the next body of water. We hurried over to the edge of the wood-covered bridge in order to try and put a picture to the noise. There wasn’t much light, but what we could see was magnificent. Even though I had been to the refurbished old Grist Mill plenty of times before, it was completely different at night. The dark didn’t allow it’s details to pop out, but that was ok, because they didn’t matter anymore. It was a whole new world, a whole new atmosphere. The feeling was exhilarating. Who knew such a simple place could cause so many different emotions to come forward.
“Wow… this really is the perfect place” my Mother awed. “It is just where I needed to be.” She looked so at ease with life. I felt as if I co¬uld ask her for anything and her response would be “sure sweetheart, whatever you want.” I was so glad that I could be there with her at this moment. A firework went off in the distance through the trees. “You think that means it is midnight?”
“Um, hold on, I’ll check. Yeah it’s New Years, and has been for two whole minutes.” I had gotten so caught up in the sounds of nature all around me that I had forgotten we were crunched for time when we arrived. That didn’t matter anymore though, because I was in a beautiful spot. Nothing could ruin the moment. The snow from the previous three weeks covered everything, making it all the more serene. What could make this any better? I was with my mother in one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve experienced in my nineteen years on this earth. I felt refreshed, like everything was going to be all right from here on out. The past was behind me. I left it in the car. None of the trials I had been going through mattered anymore. I had my family and that is all that mattered. My mother seemed to be feeling the same way, as she stood leaning up against the railing with her head down and eyes closed.
We stayed on the bridge for half an hour just looking into the darkness and listening to the powerful force behind the water. The whole time not a single car went by. It was the perfect place to be. Unfortunately, it had to end. It was, after all, after midnight. So we forced ourselves to return to the car and go home.
As I climbed into bed I was reflecting on the night and a question came into my mind, “why was that so impacting? Yeah it was nice to go somewhere quiet with my mother, but I’ve gone there before.” Trying to feel the same way I did back on that bridge, I realized: it does not matter if I’ve been there before because this night was different. I was having an internal battle with myself earlier about the point of celebrating New Year’s Eve. This trip to the old mill, and being on that bridge with my mother, had shown me that there could be importance and symbolism in something as simple as a new year.
I was able to witness first hand what a New Year’s Eve celebration can do for my mother. Its not every day that I get to experience that. There have been other times in my life that I’ve seen a change in my mom, but I think being somewhere that was so in tune with nature made all the difference. Even though we would look out off of the bridge and only see the faint outline of the water and the surrounding conifer trees, it had a lot more meaning then it’s simplicity.
She and I didn’t just go to the old refurbished Cedar Creek Grist Mill, but to a quiet place that seemed almost uninhabited by anyone else in the world. Being able to be on that bridge at the end of 2008, my mother let go of her past and embraced herself for the future. I was able to be apart of that. Thank goodness we have a New Year’s celebration every year.
