Looking Back on 2007

Say you were offered the option to go forward or backward in a time machine. Which would you choose?

If science fiction is any indication, most people would leap ahead to find out what the world will be like at some future time. Me? I’d go back: to the Last Supper, to Ludwig Beethoven’s Vienna, to the birth of my firstborn. I’m fascinated by what has happened and by the changes wrought. Whereas others blow horns and throw confetti, kissing strangers and drinking too much to welcome the new year, I tend quietly to look to the past.

This is why I love those recap shows — even the really sappy montages set to music — that show the events of the previous year. It never fails to awe me how much transpires in so short a time and how long the events echo.

In 2007, for instance, we as a world suffered the loss of Kurt Vonnegut, Ingmar Bergman, and Luciano Pavarotti. There were other deaths, of course, which for whatever reason don’t rank as high on my personal list. I’ll admit I’m irrational. That Norman Mailer finally shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving some 17 wives and 98 children, seems fitting somehow; but the silencing of Vonnegut’s wit and preternatural understanding struck me as abrupt and left me cold.

There were the iPhone and the Kindle; the collapse of the 35W bridge; the massacre at Virginia Tech; and the real estate crisis that precipitated a slow-moving but monstrous economic slump. As a result, people are reading The Da Vinci Code on handheld screens. Commuters of sound mind are taking long detours to avoid crossing rivers. College professors who teach writing are on alert (I know, because I am one) to pick out troubled students. Once secure and successful homeowners who thought they’d made a failsafe investment are going broke. And all this took place in the space of a year.

In my smaller corner of the world, 2007 was the year I celebrated my one-year wedding anniversary to a man I never expected to meet — and whom I did not yet know on New Year’s Eve 2005. I was 39, the longtime single mother of three teenagers, and happily resigned to a life of independence (though far less happily to a life of celibacy) when we brushed against one another for the first time in the Heartland Wine Bar. That we are now a family simply amazes me.

I also watched the resurrection of my older son — the one whose birth haunts me because of its profound normalcy — from a trancelike condition called autistic catatonia. In 2007, I allowed the doctors at Mayo to hook my child up to machines and jolt him with electricity in hopes it would bring him back to life. And in the sort of weird coincidence that appears in books like The Sirens of Titan, I took comfort from the fact that Vonnegut once made the same decision regarding his son, Mark.

I spent an afternoon with Leonid Hurwicz, the 90-year-old winner of the Nobel prize who fled the Nazis as a young man and came to Minnesota where he developed economic theories touched with the humanity of one who knows both honor and sin. I met Max Fink, one of psychiatry’s most well-known and controversial figures. I finished my second novel. I joined the staff at the Rake.

Truth? I also culled a lot of people out of my life this year. It happened around the time of my son’s illness as the community I knew divided neatly into those who remained admirably steadfast and those who became distant, accusing, or mean. It saddens me to say that several friends and my own younger sister were among the latter. And while I try not to live with the grudge in my throat, I find it’s a relief to know where in the world you stand.

All this happened, and yet it feels like no time at all has passed since the night of December 31, 2006. I was in a hotel room in Madison, WI, drinking a glass of something red and watching my then-brand-new husband sleep as the bells and whistles and gongs of some faraway New Year party announced midnight’s turn.

I began contemplating all this last night, while sipping on a strange wine called The Other. I will rarely admit this, but I bought the bottle mostly because the label rather appealed to me. It’s simple and incredibly off-topic but the line drawing somehow speaks to what it is to be a woman in flux. It’s inexpensive: about $12 in most stores. A blend that, confusingly, changes each season depending upon both crops and the winemaker’s whim, this Peirano Estate Heritage Collection variety doesn’t list a year. But the one I tried was 60 percent Cabernet, 30 percent Merlot, and 10 percent Syrah. Heavy, fruity, and almost leathery, today’s Other belies the naked yoga pose on the label. Like hearing the voice of Queen Latifah come out of the mouth of Heidi Klum. This is a thick, thoughtful, serviceable wine. It exists in no time, apparently, and contains an oddly specific 13.8 percent alcohol.

It’s a wine with a wallop, a rough finish that lasts for full minutes, and a dissonant drawing on the front. But after such a year, I’m thinking Kurt definitely would approve.


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.