New Year’s Eve

"Five, four, three…"

The camera pans the crowd. Everyone is blowing on noisemakers and jumping up and down.
"...two, one. Happy New Year!"

Confetti flies through the night sky and air horns blow. Every person finds someone else to kiss for good luck. The cut crystal ball has dropped on Times Square.

My husband is snoring on the couch.

This is New Year's Eve 2007. My daughter is five months old, and my husband and I are exhausted. I kiss his forehead and turn the television off.

"What?" he snorts.
"Let's go to bed," I say.
"Did I miss it?"
"Yeah," I say, placing our champagne flutes on the counter next to the sink.

I will wash them in the morning, I think, and I pad down the hall to our bedroom.

There was a time when I would have been dancing at a rave on New Year's Eve, kissing the boy I was dancing with and hugging my girlfriends. A time when I would have been at a posh party in Hollywood Hills, trying to avoid being thrown into a heated pool in my little black dress. But times have changed, and I am at home, going to bed in my flannel pajamas at four minutes past midnight, and listening to my baby daughter breathe on the monitor. Life, as they say, is good.

The New Year is a time for resolutions, and so I make one as I close my eyes. I will always remember this moment. I will always remember what it felt like to be perfectly content with a New Year's Eve spent next to my sleeping husband on the couch, my first child asleep in her crib, and a glass of cheap bubbly in my hand.

What will your resolution be this year, and how will you keep it?