A new year

Happy 2010. A new year. A new decade! I have to say that I was not that fond of the past 10 years. Maybe this new decade will be full of surprises and joys! I sure hope so!
Where do you think you will be in 10 years? Oh you are right, I hate things like that. How about where were you 10 years AGO? I was 43 and did not know how YOUNG I was! (You know it is like the thing where you think you are fat and then years in the future you look back and think DANG I looked so GOOD back then...now I am 20 pounds HEAVIER!) LOL I was discussing with my friend Gale this weekend that we used to go to dinner AND a movie and now we have to decide which one we would rather do because we do not have the energy or money for both!
10 years ago my son was 10 and in grade school. He is now 20 and in his second year of college! He went to Ireland last year and will go to Israel this year. In the past 10 years he learned to drive and graduated from high school. He has come a long way! Maybe it is fitting that your life comes so far when you are young enough to handle the changes!!
If you are reading this then you have access to the Internet. I think the thing socially that has made a change in how I meet new people and stay in touch the past 10 years is my computer and the Internet. I have made some wonderful friends over the Internet. And no it was not Internet dating or anything like that! It is a way to stay in touch. I stay in touch with my cousin who lives in Tennessee. We can chat or she can text me and we help each other make it through the day. It is a way to say hi to someone you love but not have to bother them with a phone call. With an email they can answer at their leisure!
This year I stayed in touch with Gabriela ,who I knew vaguely, but when she had to go to Romania when her father was ill it was a way to reach out to someone in pain and to cultivate a friendship that is now very dear to me! I got to know a kind soul in Jeffry (who claims he is from the planet Saturn but we love him anyway) on Facebook. I got back in touch with Digger who I went to grade school with many moons ago. Email has been a way for me to get in touch with a big group at one time so we can all meet up for dinner! SO much easier than making 12 phone calls.
I want to send a special Internet hi to my blog friend Walker! You make me smile! And a hug to Donna who is probably the only other person who wanders on here to read my thoughts. I am glad we can be in touch and I hope to see you at more plays!!
The Internet is not the only place I made friends this year...This year I met my dear Hera in a high school lobby while buying tickets to an awesome production of Les Miserable! It pays to strike up a conversation with the person next to you in line. My life is so much richer with her in my life. I also met Beth at an awards dinner. If I used every colorful word I know to describe her I still could not.
It goes without saying the single event that had the largest impact on my life the past 10 years was the loss of my beloved dad. It has been 2 years now. We have survived even when we thought we would not. I am at a place now where some days he seems so real to me. I still carry him in my heart and use him to stay strong.
So here we are ready to face a new year. Excited. Scared. Bewildered. It is like a blank page ready to be written on. Some of us will pick up a pen. Some of us a brush. Others of us will type. As long as we try, we think, we love, we create....We are not alone. We have each other.
We can do this. Happy new possibilities to us all.