I had never smoked a cigarette or a cigar, but on New Year’s Eve 1997, everyone else was doing it. We were celebrating with the gusto of the twenty-somethings we were, new enough to legal drinking that it still felt thrilling. Someone brought cigars to ring in the new year. The guys started, and then the girls took their cigars for a few puffs and a photo opp, but I was harboring a secret. It was the same secret that kept me from drinking at my sister’s wedding four days earlier. It was easy to pretend there was liquor in my diet coke, but I had to feign overindulgence to decline a wedding party celebration shot without arousing suspicion.
It was a secret that made me the lone sober houseguest at the NYE bash in New Jersey, and it was the reason I held Matt’s cigar in the photo without taking a puff.
It was why I drove us home from New Jersey on New Year’s Day, although I am always the passenger. After less than an hour on the road, I pulled over on the side of I-95 so my husband of two and a half years could puke his guts out on the edge of the highway, because he had taken full advantage of my designated driver status. He has not played beer pong since.
We made it home without another detour, and I immediately ran upstairs to the bathroom while Matt collapsed on our bed. I took the test, waited impatiently for the result, and excitedly showed my prone spouse the stick.
Matt mumbled something incoherent, with much less enthusiasm than I thought the situation merited. I was annoyed at him, but my mood couldn’t be dampened by a hungover husband. It was January 1, 1998. It was a new year, and I was going to be a mother.
I still haven’t smoked a cigar, but I do have that stick, now over twenty years old. The pink line is barely visible, but it makes me smile every time I spy it in the back of the cabinet under my bathroom sink. My kids think it’s gross.
Joining Finish the Sentence Friday with Kristi and Kenya.
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