Day the First

("Product Placement.")

(And yes, it has nothing to do with the following post)

That night, when the year’s bridge met each other and my past and future self shook hands and went their own ways, I was on the roof of the house.

(You may be wondering why or how I got up there, and it certainly had nothing to do with an ability to leap tall bounds, or to teleport, or even anything involving a rickety ladder. It does, however, involve a lopsided spiral staircase and my father’s fantastic sense to design the top of our recently renovated house into a flat balcony, if it should be called a balcony.)

I had just gotten a Call, and I had flubbed it. But it had plastered me with this idiotic smile and light-heartedness that it left me dreamlike as I leant on the rooftop fence, the Shandy in my hand barely drunk, while I dreamt into the wind.

The fireworks came. The ones people secretly bought from friends who had friends who are dealers that dealt with dealers of these sorts of fireworks, and they lit lower rung of the skies with unsynchronised brevity. The bangs were thumps, deep and bass-y. I watched them bloomed and died, bloomed and died, bloomed and died…

It was beautiful, in its own unremarkable way.

I imagined a hand in mine, and I held that. And then I wished I was flying in the clouds, crossing oceans, passing mountains and planes and cities.

I finished the Shandy. Then a Text came.

And oh, did I wish.

***

You don’t normally spend your New Year’s Day painting gates, but that was what my parents got up to do, and I got slotted under the morning sun before I knew it, mentally noting that you do not, under any circumstances, wear a black t-shirt if you were painting under Malaysian sun.

Our first meal of the year was at Uncle Tony’s, and it was every of his claypot specialities. The New Year’s part was that we ended up being temporary workers to help clear the tables, them being extremely shorthanded. I had found it to be amusing and strangely fun, overlooking the fact that every other customer looked like they expected us to clean their tables too. Then they saw us sitting down to eat. Then they started clearing their own tables, as best as they could.

The day rolled into a pleasant afternoon, a pleasant evening, and a pleasant night barbecuing at an uncle’s house. Then I got home to a wonderful night.

And somewhere, in a voice that's very much me on High, said "This has to be the best New Year's Day."

"Ever."