2010 is going to be the best! 1

2010** is going to be the best year ever for me.  How do I know?

• Because I’m living to see it. 
  
• Because I will do my part to make it so.
  
• Because I embrace what it is not.

It is not any of the previous years I squandered in envy or fear.
Envy:  how come I don’t have a man, will the man I’ve been dating be with me on New Year’s Eve (or do the disappearing act that other-brothers had done before)?*
Fear:  how will I pay this or face that?

It is not any of the years I wasted waiting.
Waiting: for it to happen, whatever it was.  (A man, money, my adult children’s lives to sort out, an acceptance letter…)

2010 is going to be the best year because at this moment it is full of possibilities like every year that came before.  The possibilities of goals fulfilled, dreams realized fantasies experienced.  (It is also possible that it will be the same sugar/sour dressed up in a new decade.  Guess what?  It wouldn’t be so bad if it were the same.  A lot of good has happened in this past decade!)

2010 is going to be great because I was fully present and content on its eve.  I celebrated in my home with my husband: 

• good food,
  
• good music,
  
• candlelight,
  
• champagne,
  
• love expressed in words, silence and actions,
  
• a home reverberating with love,
  
• calls made to and received from loved ones,
  
• glimpses of celebrations around the world.

Unlike many other years, I wasn’t wishing I was doing something else or worried about what I might be missing.  I did not trouble myself over a brother or friend who chose to be alone and did not even plan to stay up to witness the moment the New Year began.  Their lives, their choices.  Who am I to judge?  What would my worrying do except intrude on my good time?

I put on dangling earrings, a glittery blouse, velvet pants, silver sandals, swept my hair up (except for a few locks falling seductively down my right cheek) and had at it!

I remembered various ways I’ve ushered in the New Year:

• Doing First Night activities.
  
• Throwing a big party for friends and strangers.
  
• All dressed up for a ball (in St. Louis and in Boston).
  
• At a private, catered dinner (Chicago).
  
• As the official babysitter (ch-ching).
  
• On the phone reaching out to not be alone.
  
• With a bunch of girlfriends.
  
• Saturated with angst.

How delicious to face 2010 squarely, celebratory and satisfactorily.  It’s going to be the best year ever.

Happy New Year every one!

(*I started dating my husband in the month of September.  It quickly became apparent to me that he was the one for me.  I wasn’t sure if I was the one for him.  My sister told me, “If he is with you on new year’s eve,, that’s yo’ man.”  He was, and he is.)

(** Dear Reader, I just discovered that I had drafted but never published this entry.  I apologize for the delay.)