Ring in The New!

I was startled when I saw the first of the "Best of the Decade" lists in some magazine. Really? This is the end of an entire decade? (OK. Not really. I know, I KNOW the decade ends when 2011 begins. But still.)

The new millenium was 10 years ago? I mentioned Y2K to Miriam and she stared at me blankly. "You know, when all the computers were going to crash and it was going to be the end of the world as we knew it?" Still nothing. Oh, yeah. She was only 2 1/2 when that happened.

Time is funny stuff. One day, one moment, can be an eternity. The past 10 years slipped right by. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that someone born in the 1980's is actually a legal adult. How does this happen?

And how will we remember this decade? And what the heck will we call it? The zeroes?

It has been a zero in a way. We've made an intimate acquaintance, as a nation, with terrorism. We're suffering through some low-grade wars. The current economic slowdown has been nothing to sneeze at.

But there's good stuff, too. Facebook, for example. I'm finding people I'd lost track of and it's my lifeline to the world. My girls have gone from little girls to young women. OK. Maybe that was a mixed blessing. But overall good.

But mostly the past 10 years have been planning suppers, getting people to school, running errands, and the various other minutae of daily life. Life is, after all, the stuff that happens while we're busy making other plans. Next year I'll be babysitting and dogsitting. Groceries will be bought, the floors will still need cleaned. The alarm will still be going off too early. I'll be focused on trying to make every deadline that each day presents, and, before I know it, another 10 years will go by.

Happy New Year. I hope twenty-ten brings everyone peace, love, and the perfectly ordinary.