Sherri Cornelius

Technically it's just barely New Year's Eve. One of those nights I wish I could sleep but I can't. Stayed up till midnight because I recognized the hum in my forebrain, but even then I wasn't sleepy enough so I got up again. Seems like 2 a.m. is the time to shoot for on these nights, and what better time to do my year-end retrospective?

Even though everybody else is reflecting enough to outshine me, I feel the need to add my reflections on the twenty-aughts. Looking over the past decade, it's hard to attach a single word or phrase which will sum it up. I mean, a decade is freakin' forever. When the decade began, my first child was still in diapers, I'd just had the dream which would inspire my first novel, and I bought my very first computer. I had somehow gotten myself a job as a columnist with a large local newspaper and had won 1st honorable mention in a major Oklahoma writing contest. I was living in the country and working in a factory and thinking I'd be better off raising my daughter alone. I was prettier than I thought, with a pixie hair cut and a relatively good figure, but unfortunately just as trapped as I felt. That was fairly early in the most tumultuous period in my life, which only settled down less than two years ago. At least, I think I can call it settled now.

So what about 2009? It felt stagnant, even though I can point to dramatic events from the past year, most likely because of the maddening lack of writing-related business till about September. I think I probably needed a break, but I'm compulsively forward-moving, so sometimes Nature has to force the breaks upon me, at which point I wail and stamp my feet at the unfairness. I learned a lot of stuff in 2009, and thank goodness; a year in which I didn't learn something about the world would be a failure, indeed. This year I learned

• how to be an editor, sorta, and how to write again;


• I can't keep my loved ones from making mistakes, and actually, the mistakes weren't mine to prevent in the first place;


• how to trust my intuition, and how to differentiate a gut feeling from a gas bubble;


• and finally, that I will probably never be comfortable in this world, and knowing that makes me more comfortable.

Also, this is as good a time as any to announce that I will be a step-grandmother in February. At first I kept the secret until my bonus daughter decided how she would handle her pregnancy, seeing as how she's a senior in high school, and then I kept it a secret because I needed my feelings about the situation to settle. Now that I have, I'm proud to announce that we will welcome a baby boy to brighten the bleakest month of the year. I'm trying to think of what the baby will call me. I'm too young to be called grandma! I thought Gary would be funny. You know, Grandma + Sherri = Gary. If I spelled it Gerri everybody would say Jerry. Unfortunately, Z didn't think it was as funny as I did. How about just Mimi?

So tonight we'll make some glitter crowns out of card stock and Maggie Rose will fall asleep on the couch while we all wait for the ball to drop, and at twelve oh one we'll drop into bed. Happy New Year, everybody. Best one yet.