Another year? Somebody’s got to be kidding. I haven’t completed much of anything I had fussed at myself to do in 2013.

For most of us, it’s the same old story: Promise ourselves to do things we put off the year before and even the year before that. The older we get, time seems to speed up, or — wait a minute— maybe it’s just that I am slowing down. Actually, I couldn’t get much slower; it’s like I need a battery charge every now and then. My family has the idea I’ll be around forever.

People still say I don’t look my age, and that is a consolation. Of course, when they ask my secret I tell them to just keep moving, activate the brain every morning, complain loud and clear — and, by the way, a good hair tint and a smattering of makeup really helps too. Change things around and don’t let yourself get bored. My friend Dorothy Mann often tells me she is so modest she goes in the closet to change her mind. Well, not quite what I meant, but to each her own.

When Don and I were young — in our 20s — living in Seattle, New Year’s Eve was an anticipated event. Some of the older folks may remember Parker’s Pavilion on Aurora Avenue. It was a bottle club and had a great dance band. It took me days to get ready for the event, in between diapers and keeping house. In the mid-1950s, we gals were all wearing the ballerina strapless evening gowns. Mine was a baby blue with silver threads running through the netted material with a stiff petticoat underneath and silver dancing slippers on my then small feet (I still have the dress about four sizes ago). Don said I looked like the top on a music box. I guess that was intended as a compliment.

Getting ready was quite the chore with two little girls and four little guys following me about — the girls into my makeup and boys pulling on my skirt wanting attention.

Once ready, the real job was filling the babysitter in on each child and their needs, while she looked at me like I was a Ma Kettle (remember “The Egg and I” by Betty MacDonald?). It wasn’t easy getting a sitter with so many little ones.  Since mom and my two sisters went with us, my sitters had to get sitters of their own.

It was an exciting time with Don. So handsome in his suit and tie with a twinkle in his soft brown eyes when he looked at me, meaning a romantic evening ahead. How we loved to dance, and dance we did until the band finished playing “Goodnight, Ladies.” Meeting in the parking lot after the dance, with energy still left, our group would head for downtown Seattle to a nightclub to dance some more.

When all were tired and hungry, we went looking for a restaurant that served breakfast at such an early hour and spent the time chattering about the evening. Finally giving up, we reluctantly said our goodnights and had to laugh as the dawn was coming up. It was back to the real world as we tucked the memory away to think about until the next year.

It’s memories like these that warm my heart on a cold winter night with Don not here now. The older we get, it seems one can’t remember where we left our keys, yet thoughts of long ago still remain in the corners of our aging minds to find their way back to be relived over and over. I choose to only remember the good times. Ah, yes, my “good old days!”

So, I wish all a year of making happy memories. Happy New Year, my friends.

— Jacque Thornton is a columnist for the Kingston Community News. Contact her at jacquejt@centurytel.net