Clare's Dad

For some reason, it doesn’t feel like the end of a decade to me.

Could it be that technically this isn’t the end of a decade. Ten years ago, journalists reminded us that the new millennium didn’t start until the end of 2000 because there was no year zero. Purists still insist that 2009 isn’t the end of a decade. Technically, most of us don’t care. The year 2009 is the end of a decade.

Could it be that the decade has been so devastatingly bad that we’re in disbelief that it could finally be ending? After terrorist attacks, wars, natural disasters, and financial crises worse than any in generations, maybe we find it hard to believe that we could get a fresh start.

Or could it be that the past decade hasn’t really had a feel? I remember the end of the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s. Those decades each had unique fashions, styles, and fads. For me, those decades also pretty much corresponded, respectively, with my childhood, my high school and college years, and my twenties. This past decade has felt more fast-moving and more like anything and everything goes—but not for any significant length of time—which maybe was its feel. The decade really hasn’t even had a name. Ten years into it, has anyone really said the “naughts” or the “aughts” all that often?

The more I think about it though, the past decade has had a very specific feel. Yes, it was a terrible span of ten years for many people. But for the feel I’m talking about, I have to look closer—not at the fashions or fads, not at the world or the country, but at myself.

Ten years ago—on December 31, 1999—I was an attorney living in New York. Clare’s Mom and I—still relative newlyweds—spent the last night of the last millennium at Madison Square Garden where we had paid a ridiculous amount of money for two tickets to see Billy Joel. After midnight, we walked through the confetti-covered streets of Times Square. Today, I’m executive director of a children’s theater in Connecticut—a nonprofit where I’m earning far less than I did one decade ago. Clare’s Mom and I have been married eleven years. And of course, there’s Clare. That’s a lot of change in ten years.

So, for me, the past decade hasn’t been so much about what’s happened in the world as what’s happened in my own family. I’ve certainly never been Father of the Year—some years far from it—but overall I think I’ve been a pretty good dad. Clare, at least, gives me her seal of approval—and that’s all that really matters. For me, the past ten years have been the Decade of Being a Dad—and that’s a very good feel. (And, just think, if I make it through another decade Clare will be eighteen. We’ll call that the “Decade of Being Worried.”)

Have a safe, healthy and happy 2010, everyone!