We’ll be in New York this year, and there won’t be macaroons. I could bake or buy them, but it seems foolish to try to recreate what’s impossible to replicate. And if the end of this year calls for anything, it’s gladness and gratitude.
Chennai: I knew that New Year’s Eve 2020 would be different; still, I never thought I would be planning to bake a cake. None of my last 20 or so New Year’s Eve dinners ever ended with a layer cake that involved molasses and cream cheese. But then, those dinners were in Paris. And for almost all of them, I cooked for more people than I could comfortably squeeze around our table — one year I had to buy 20 folding chairs and set up dishes on every flat surface in the apartment. No matter how many we were, I always had to use every outdoor ledge, sill and flower box to hold wine.
Those dinners, now a family tradition, started as a dream. I was a graduate student when I got a postcard from a friend whose husband had been transferred to Paris. It upended her life, but whatever difficulties she had, none of them were mentioned in the card I got that January. The postcard, which was pinned to the corkboard near my desk for years, had a picture of the gilded bridge near the Eiffel Tower, the Pont Alexandre III, and on the flip side, she wrote that to celebrate New Year’s Eve, she and her husband ate oysters and drank Champagne on the bridge at midnight. I wanted to do that.
And eventually I did, but in my own fashion and on the Pont des Arts, the bridge closest to where we lived. It’s hard to say how many people have sat around our table and walked to the bridge with us since then. Maybe 200? Probably more. There have been dozens of people, friends of friends we’d never met before we opened the door to them.
We’ll be in New York this year, and there won’t be macaroons. I could bake or buy them, but it seems foolish to try to recreate what’s impossible to replicate. And if the end of this year calls for anything, it’s gladness and gratitude. I don’t know what I’ll cook for dinner, but I know that this year we’ll be just family, and so there’ll be room for all of us around one table. I’m thinking this New Year’s Eve will be just the one we need now. That it will be comforting. That we’ll have one another. That we’ll have cake. And if the cake is the charm that brings a sweet year, I might even make it again next year. In Paris. — NYT
Those dinners, now a family tradition, started as a dream. I was a graduate student when I got a postcard from a friend whose husband had been transferred to Paris. It upended her life, but whatever difficulties she had, none of them were mentioned in the card I got that January. The postcard, which was pinned to the corkboard near my desk for years, had a picture of the gilded bridge near the Eiffel Tower, the Pont Alexandre III, and on the flip side, she wrote that to celebrate New Year’s Eve, she and her husband ate oysters and drank Champagne on the bridge at midnight. I wanted to do that.
And eventually I did, but in my own fashion and on the Pont des Arts, the bridge closest to where we lived. It’s hard to say how many people have sat around our table and walked to the bridge with us since then. Maybe 200? Probably more. There have been dozens of people, friends of friends we’d never met before we opened the door to them.
We’ll be in New York this year, and there won’t be macaroons. I could bake or buy them, but it seems foolish to try to recreate what’s impossible to replicate. And if the end of this year calls for anything, it’s gladness and gratitude. I don’t know what I’ll cook for dinner, but I know that this year we’ll be just family, and so there’ll be room for all of us around one table. I’m thinking this New Year’s Eve will be just the one we need now. That it will be comforting. That we’ll have one another. That we’ll have cake. And if the cake is the charm that brings a sweet year, I might even make it again next year. In Paris. — NYT
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