So which decade are you in?

All this hype about it being a new decade. Okay, people, let's all raise our fingers in front of our faces. Got 'em up there?

Count. Starting on the left. One, two, three... you know the drill. What's on the far right? Your little right pinkie finger is what when you're counting? That's right: ten!

That would be, the end of a ten. 2010. Next year's the end of the decade. I did hear a commentator on one of the XM Public Radio stations state that yesterday, so I know I'm not alone in this conviction. But perhaps we are just so ready to get rid of these first years of the 21st century, that we (media, you know who you are) have found a convenient way to package them up, tie them with a virtual bow, and push them back in a corner. Ah... 2010. A new decade.

Or not.

But these first years have been a difficult labor and birth process. Fetching the newspaper this morning, I looked up at our now-nonfunctioning (by choice, ours, not its) front yard light. Ten years ago, on the morning of Jan. 1, 2000, we had come in from spending the night elsewhere and found that a brick had been thrown through one of the glass panes. Happy New Year, someone had said and smashed part of our glass. We put it back together, much as we've been seeking to put ourselves back together in the wake of 9/11 and the Iran/Afghanistan miseries, terrorism on our shores and the recession. Now that I think about it, perhaps it is best to bundle it all up, declare a new decade, and march on.

But on a personal level, it's been a good decade. Both sons out of college/grad school, both married to wonderful women, two grandchildren healthy and growing. We've been privileged to travel to Australia not once, but twice! We've made new friends and learned to treasure old ones more deeply.

Happy New Year, no matter which decade you think you're in.