As I hoped, it worked out! This is my 100th post. In memory of my dad.
And so as the huge Wedgewood Crystal Ball drops on New Year’s Eve, millions count down 10-9-8-…1, Happy New Year!; my family also, counts down to the New Year. It’s a tradition. I’m sure my brothers and sister still cannot celebrate a New Year’s Eve without thinking of its special significance. Our dad’s birthday. He would be 93, and if the truth be told although he didn’t celebrate 93 birthdays, his children continue to observe and remember his very special day.
We observed his birthday taking our places standing on top of a chair within a minute of the countdown. As we got to the final ten seconds we would shout out the numbers 10 through 1 and “jump into the New Year” shouting “Happy Birthday, Dad!” It was either a Dutch or our family tradition, I’m not sure.
All those years of counting down became prophetic. Dad’s job working for a company under contract with NASA saw us countdown Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle flights. In Florida, we walked outside with our classmates to watch the latest launch counting down. In the television coverage we heard the countdown and then a voice pronounce, “Ignition, liftoff.”
As we come to another New Year, the coming of 2012, we will “launch” another one perched on chairs seconds before the crystal ball drops in Times Square. From our chair tops having imbibed some of dad’s mulled wine we will “jump into the New Year.” Ignition. Lift off. No, we won’t be soaring into the sky, but we will plant our feet squarely on the ground and think of him.
***
Dad’s Mulled Wine
1 bottle Merlot
1/2 cup of brandy (if you have some on hand)
2/3 cups sugar
2 or 3 cinnamon sticks
1 orange
a bottle of cloves
Dad spent New Year’s afternoon preparing his orange. He stuck cloves outlining the last two digits of the old year on one side of the orange and the last two digits of the new year on the other side. For example, -11 one one side, -12 on the other side. Early in the evening he poured the red wine + brandy into a pan and dissolved the sugar over a lo heat. Once the sugar was dissolved in the wine, he placed the orange with cloves along with the cinnamon sticks in with the warming mixture.
Thank you for all the reads, all the comments, all the likes...most of all thank you for the friendship!
A toast to continuing friendship...smiles, lots of laughs, nodding in agreement or disagreement, tears, and connecting. Happy New Year!
I’m sure your Dad will be watching & smiling!
Awww…this truly makes me smile. Thank you for reading even though I had no pictures. I’ll try to upload one New Year’s eve of the next orange.
what neat traditions to keep going. the orange is clever. happy birthday to your father.
love live his memories and traditions.
The Royal Dutch family comes from the House of Orange, a neat symbol I think of dad’s heritage. Thank you for reading.
What a beautiful post and tradition for your family! The numbers in the orange are such a vivid image — thank you for sharing.
I enjoyed the comment you left on Priya’s blog about the wind chimes, so I popped over here to check your blog out, and am glad I did!
Happy early New Year to you, and Happy Birthday to your father. He sounds like he was a wonderful man.
How sweet of you to visit. I love Priya’s posts. As it turns out it is my 100th post and I had hoped it would turn out that this post in memory of my dad would turn out that way. Only a blogger would understand. I will stop by soon to visit you and wish you a Happy New Year.
Sweet post in memory of your Dad, Georgette. (By the way, Motor Man’s bd is Jan 1!)
Congratulations on your 100th post. I have a milestone approaching too…..
Happy New Year!
The coincidences just keep coming! (smiling) Please wish a Happy Birthday to MM on what I consider a very special day indeed.
What a sweet post in memory of your Dad, whom you obviously loved and treasured so very much.
Love … lives on.
MJ
I miss him. He was such a great communicator who kept up with every member of the family (beyond our immediate family), some of whom I don’t hear from that often any more.
Wow, that sounds potent, in a good way!
You’re so sweet. I know, potent…with cloves…but I think it tastes good.
What wonderful and heartfelt traditions to bring in the New Year! Happy birthday to Dad, happy 100th blog to you!
Thank you, Carol. Happy New Year to you.
Georgette, if I am awake at midnight, I will be jumping off a chair after the countdown. You have my word. And, in addition to saying Happy New Year – I will also yell out happy birthday wishes to your Dad.
Thank you for sharing another wonderful family tradition with us. Oh, and congrats on 100 posts. I look forward to 100 more!
haha too funny! Oh, if you could do that the South East Coast would be covered famously! Thank you, LD. Here’s to wishing you and Rob a Happy New Year toasting with your chosen beverage. Love you, girl.
Thanks for sharing your incredible New Years Eve Birthday memory and the mulled wine recipe. Cheers!
Jeanne, Salut. Salud. and Cheers. As we toast in the New Year and hold our glasses high, I will think of the many wonderful friends I have met so recently here. Happy New Year, nola girl!
So what happens to the Orange after the celebration?
ooops! Completely left out the part about warming the orange with cloves in the wine!!! So sorry, but thank you for the heads up so I could go back and edit the post!
Anyway, after we have drunk all the wine we cut the peel of the cooked orange down to the skin, peel that away and serve up the purplish orange sections! No worries…nothing wasted in this frugal Dutch family. Wishing you and your dear family a Happy New Year, rumbley! I’m so glad to have met you this year.
Here’s to another 100 posts, a lovely new year and to the memory of your dad!
Thank you, winsomebella. My dad loved people and I know he has to be smiling with these thoughtful New Year wishes. Happy New Year to you and your family.
Such a great tradition and memories of your Dad’s birthday. And to share them all with us on your 100th post is quite an accomplishment. Your father would be pleased and proud, I know it! Happy New Year!
Dad loved technology. I can hardly believe that my last tech memory of him was of him being so excited with his “mouse” for the computer. Can it be that long?
Guess what? I’m in Dallas at Daughter #2′s and she’s talking to “Suri”, you know the voice in the phone. It’s amazing what Suri knows! I bring it up because I remember both you and I learned about her through “reeling’s” post…wanting to take that info to guess where…a wedding of course, to impress the young guests about our tech savy. Anyway, within months of learning about her, I make her acquaintance up close and personal. Just had to share…:) Happy New Year to you and your wonderful family!
I’ve been getting “acquainted” with Suri too! Son got a new phone for Christmas and Suri has been getting up close and personal with us. LOL Happy New Year to you too!! And thank you again for the Reader Appreciation Award — I posted about it today.
Georgette I have been searching for a recipe for mulled wine for years after having it at a friend’s farm long ago..THANK YOU!!
You may want to go easy on the cloves to start with such as just a polka dot pattern. Outlining the years albeit only 2+2 digits is a lot of cloves. As Rufus commented below or above…this is a potent recipe…but a goodie still. Also, you may want to put just 1/4 c of brandy or a 1/2 c. Everything to taste, you know. I’m sure you’re good at improvising. When we hold our cups/glasses high on New Year’s Eve, I will remember so many blogging friends I have met this year, including you. Happy New Year to you.
Georgette, what a wonderful father and family…..and what a joyful and exuberant tradtion to welcome his birthday and the new year!!!…and then the added life bonus of seeing the lift off of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo AND the Space Shuttles!..wowowowow! Wishing you a Happy New Year….and please lift a cup of that wonderful sounding Mulled Wine for all of us out here in your blog-o-sphere world!
To think a year ago I had not met so many wonderful people who share so much and so deeply: their thoughts, their writing, their perspectives, their time in writing consistently. I am so glad we crossed paths and look forward to sharing further in 2012. Yes, I will raise my cup…I drink the mulled wine from a cup, much like wassail…and will make a toast to new and old friends, memories and new ventures. Happy New Year to you and your family.
My friend, my friend. What a meaningful tradition, imbued with such tender family memories. I hope you won’t mind if I borrow the recipe and begin the ritual in our family…with an honorary first toast to your pop, of course.
I actually like this slowed-down week between Christmas and New Year. It reminds me of putting my garden to bed. I can smack by gloves together, knocking off the dirt of the old year, knowing some things grew well…others didn’t, but hope will rise with spring.
I count you and your words as one a treasured seed, and where you are planted…faith, hugs, and acceptance springs up. Happy New Year..my tender friend.
What a lovely comment, Barb. Alas, I do not have a garden yet, but have just the spot picked out at the farm when that day comes that we move out there. Since my friend Rufus commented on the potency of the mulled wine…perhaps I should clarify… you do not need to use a whole bottle of cloves, but yes, it will take a bottle of cloves to pick out the necessary number of them to outline the -11 and -12. We don’t know any other recipe but this one. Dad kepy it on the stove and I prepare it from a crockpot. We ladle it out into cups, like wassail.
What a beautiful way to celebrate your Dad’s memory.
Congratulations on your 100th post.
Thank you, Rosie. Just before midnight, we all spot a chair or sofa, and at “3-2-1″ take our leaps. The kids especially, love it too.
What a priceless & treasured memory of New Years – think it’s awesome how the tradition continues as you leap into a new year … would love to share that moment with you.
What are your New Year plans?
I often think that my sister and I should celebrate our parents birthdays, even though both have been gone quite a long time.
I love that your dad put cloves into an orange for the outgoing and incoming years and then put the orange into the mulled wine. My dad used to make a punch for my teenage parties (and we’d all get quite sozzled on it!) and this recipe sounds quite similar except I don’t think the punch was heated.
I’ve just subscribed to your blog. Have seen your comments in many mutual friends blogs for a while now, you always have interesting things to say and it seems your blog is interesting too.
So glad you have dropped by. I’m glad the mulled wine recipe appeals to you. It’s a fun and tasty drink to have sitting on the stove at home. I still remember how Dad placed the cloves in the orange etching out the old and new year…as I watched him, it made me pause and think about how he made the holiday season linger a little longer…his brew, his birthday, our crazy way of launching the New Year. Warm memories, like the drink. I will be right over to visit you. Are you from the uk?
Yes, I’m in Wales.
To think of you and your sibs all jumping off chairs at the same time in memory of your dad – what a sweet tradition. He’s with you in spirit and memories still, isn’t he?
He was my Renaissance man and…crazy guy. He was gentle, always gracious…and funny with a twinkle in his eye that needed no words. Just exchanging a glance made us laugh…as if to say, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Thanks for sharing the man, and the celebration of life. Happy New Year.
Thank you for reading, Patti.
Happy 93rd Birthday to your dad. Whereever he is now, he is smiling and glowing with joy knowing his family loves him and celebrates his legacy year after year. Beautiful post my friend. Wishing you and your family a Happy New Year filled with amazing blessings. To an awesome 2012!!!
Thank you, IT. Happy New Year! Blessings to you in 2012.
What a fantastic tradition, Georgette! I have to say it made me tear up a little, too. Just lovely! I wish you and your family nothing but blessings and love this new year and I am so happy to have ‘met’ you this past year. I can’t wait to read your next 100 posts. Cheers!
Thank you, Darla. Now please don’t climb up onto any chairs after having imbibed this mulled wine + brandy recipe and leap off! Hope you are feeling better and can celebrate tonight.
Sweet, sweet memories being built and maintained and re-loved. Thanks for a family night, Georgette!
Thank you for understanding, souldipper.
I love everything about this piece – the tradition, the recipe, the memories, nostalgia, ideas, pictures. Mulled wine is such a fantastic thing and studding the oranges in the shape of the year number is brilliant. Must try that. Happy New Year to you.
Happy New Year, wfm! So glad to have met you in ’11 and I hope you enjoy this concoction.
Such a tender, loving post. My own dad has been gone thirty years and more, but I still honor him by making his own special New Year’s drink every year – a hot rum punch that keeps well in quart jars in the refrigerator, and that we always kept available through January and February to warm the snow shovelers when they came in from their chore!
I’ve enjoyed your blog so much in these past months. There’s a sense of deep human kindness here – a rarity in our world, and now I think a quality nurtured in you by your father. Blessings to you in the New Year!
I am so glad to meet someone who does something similar and also remembers their father vividly despite the years. I love how you prepare your rum punch and keep it on hand throughout the colder months remembering him.
Thank you for visiting my blog site. I am not a writer such as you, but I do have family stories that I’m working to collect over time and then self publish into a book for our daughters, nieces and nephews, my brothers, sister and mother. You honor me with your encouragement and very kind words. I enjoy visiting your site because you have a way of imbuing authenticity, moments of reflection and at the same time reporting history and a cultural heritage. In this day and age, I don’t want the latter to be lost or forgotten. I learn from not only what you write but how you write.
Living where you do, you probably know some interesting folks who were connected to the space program. Dad was certainly rare and I did not fully understand it until I left home. In many ways I was so privileged to have him as a father. He’s been gone over 20 years. My mother is an amazing person too; they made a remarkable team. I have noticed currently I am a bit lopsided in my stories about him, but stories about her too, will come in time. Again, thank you for reading.