Olivier salad and fireworks

We did the new year the way we always do when no one has the energy for a grander plan: my table, too many bowls, the television murmuring through varieties of nostalgia while we argued gently about the correct ratio of pickle to potato in the Olivier. Dinara arrived with mandarins still cold from the balcony. Aigerim brought champagne that had no business tasting as good as it did and a playlist that refused to commit to a single decade.

I wore black, of course, and the softest cardigan I own, and spent the early evening pretending the mayonnaise was a serious craft question. The flat filled with the smell of dill, boiled eggs, and the faint metallic note of peeled citrus. We told the same stories we tell every December about trains missed and winters survived, and laughed at ourselves for finding them newly hilarious.

When the countdown began we crowded toward the screen out of pure habit, as if the pixels could enforce the math. At midnight the first fireworks went up over the rooftops, ragged and earnest, some professional and some clearly launched from a courtyard by someone with more hope than sense. We clinked glasses. Someone cried a little without announcing why. I thought of all the kitchens across this wide post-Soviet night doing some version of the same ceremony.

Later, coats on for the stairwell chill, we watched the sky stutter with light until the cold won. Inside again, more mandarins, the salad bowl raided past neatness, the shortwave off for once. I went to bed sticky-fingered and grateful, which is as fine a way to start a year as any I have found.