A Decade in Review

In the last days of 1989, when I was 22, I wrote a newspaper story quoting experts predicting the trends for the 1990s. Good-bye greedy and mean 1980s, the experts said. Hello, kindness toward man and old person.

Ha! What the hell do experts know? And, certainly, those shoulder-pad, big-hair wearing experts of 1989 did not know about the Internet, where the Mean can be Queen. (They also didn’t foresee greedy, bailed-out Wall Streeters).

I have been reading the round-ups for the decade that was the 2000s, and predictions for the 2010s. I am doubtful of predictions beyond the ones that say we’re going to be more and more and more wired. (I add that we’ll also be more and more and more exhausted).

And, while I too got scabs in the 2000s, and suffered the collective sadness brought on by everything from 9-11 to the darkness of the recession, I took my own inventory and it wasn’t so damned bad. Gracias a Dios.

The 2000s were the decade of my Putting on My Big Girl Panties — the decade I had to put into practice what I learned in the Therapy of the 1990s.

A personal synopsis: The decade opened with my marriage on the correction from a skid. We moved from our gentrified, hipster hood smack in the middle of the city to a house in the wooded Boonies.

We then went headlong into infertility treatment — from 2001 to 2003. I cried a lot in 2002.

I was face down on the bed, passed out like a drooling drunk, in March 2003 — my first trimester — when my editor called to give me the next day’s assignment.

“We’ve gone to war,” she said.
“Shit,” I said, and rolled over to sleep some more.

So, in this decade of turmoil, I became a mother. My heart expanded by a million times. As our country has divided and contracted, I have been watching someone grow and bloom. A blessing and a perfect pill for purposely shutting out the cold, hard stuff.

And, for sure, this decade will forever remind me my mettle was tested by early motherhood — long ass labor, bad latch, round-the-clock expelling of breast milk with a very big machine, sleepless teething, hiring of nannies, the guilt, sadness and exhaustion of being a work-outside-the-casa-Mami.

Smack in the middle of the decade, I quit my full-time reporting job, launched a business and began to work at home — everything from freelance to dinner to vacuuming to potty training. (I longed for my downtown cubicle sometimes.)

So, the second half of the decade is a blur of mom’s groups, Pollitos pitching, toddler hell, wondering why I can’t seem to get those baby albums finished. I launched the Boonie blog (2006), sent child to school full-time. Turned 40! Husband survived a few rounds of buy-outs and lay-offs.

In the shadow of recession, started a second business — the PR and copy writing one — wrote freelance again, added Chichi&Flaco, launched a second blog, started and stopped and started and stopped writing a novel — the same one I started and stopped in the 1990s. My metabolism slowed. Chin hair sprouted.

On the family front, my brother fell in love, got married, had two beautiful, healthy babies. My parents both survived cancer. Friends who should not have died, did. Others had babies, moved to new cities, lost their jobs, launched businesses.

In this decade, I also severed ties with some and reconnected with others. Used a big stick when I needed it. Let go when it was time. No regrets. The mantra has been “Next right thing.” In Big Girl Panties, of course.

In the next decade, my daughter will enter puberty and I likely will enter menopause. When the decade is over, she will be 16 and I will be 52. My husband likely will be retired.

While these last ten years have been both invigorating and exhausting, let me tell you, amigo, I can easily predict that the next ten in this Boonie household — full of hormones out of whack and drama-loving Cuban-Americans — will be as scary as riding a roller coaster without a seatbelt.

So, I’m bringing the Big Girl Panties into the next decade. And, getting Maria her own pair.

And how was your decade?

Happy 2010! Now, go mop your house!