I would rather not look back on 2009.

Personally … I’ve had better.

And overall, well 2009 kind of bit it in a big way, not unlike yours truly when she started it off by falling down a flight of stairs at the crapartment.

Yeah, that’s pretty much how 2009 felt all year long. A big pain in the tuchas.
There was war, H1N1, Sarah Palin, Levi Johnston, Rush Limbaugh, Nancy Pelosi, the balloon boy, Jon, Kate, Tiger and Kanye. Fuel went down but the recession didn’t let us feel it. Oprah’s leaving. Still, it wasn’t all glass half-empty.

Journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling were rescued from imprisonment in North Korea; Susan Boyle made us all dream a dream of time gone by; Sully landed on the Hudson; and the U.S. Navy escaped Somali pirates.

For every tragedy there was plenty of inspiration.

I’m reminded that we’re also closing a decade tonight, when the clock strikes midnight and it reminds me of the bigger picture.

The world was supposed to end in 2000, or at the very least – stop computing.

But it didn’t.

Instead, we’ve computed better than ever. I ordered up a virtual latte from Starbucks on my phone last night and virtually drank it. The 7,000 calories were not virtual, so there’s still room for improvement, but I digress.

Our world did, however, come to a stop not long after the millennium got started on an Indian summer day on Sept. 11, 2001 against a clear blue sky. So searing were the events of that day, it’s almost the unofficial start to the decade … I don’t know if I really remember much of 2000 at all.

But ultimately we took that first step, through fire and ash and everything but brimstone. A sea of gray and pain awakened us in a way we’re still trying to define.

And ever since, the nation is collectively suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
But they make pills for that, don’t they? Does insurance cover that? No? Yes? No? Yes?
Oh well … back to my point.

Through immeasurable loss, we clung to the heroic tales of those who stood up to terror; we believed in the love heard over final phone calls and last messages. It is that love, that endurance that has gotten us through too many years of war to count, too many jobs lost to recoup from, too many financially-crooked figures to account for.

Years later, wounds would still be fresh when we’d be hit again by a merciless hurricane. Salt in those wounds would sting as it was painfully clear we were simply unprepared for such a disaster – a fact that would have been true despite who sat in the oval office – which simply made life scarier still.

But something happened there too. We began to feel again, whether it was rage or embarrassment or disgust. There it was, through the troubled times, through the pain – an awakening to our own human condition.

Just as we’d come together in 2001, a sea of one on the Brooklyn Bridge, countless Americans opened their homes up to those displaced by the storm, traveled far and wide to lend a helping hand. They shared in the loss and the load and carried on.

Our Obama in Shining Armor is no more a player in the tragic comedy that is American politics, where the court jester is played by Sarah Palin and an army of politicians – from both sides of the line – run around blindly looking to kill the rabbit.

And sometimes you just have to laugh at them to deal with them at all. The same goes for the overtly opinionated journalists as of late (catching the irony?) and the oversexed public figures and the overwhelming advancement of everything technological and social-mediaish.

My phone just asked me to wrap things up.

We still have our ruthless criminals and kidnappers and ponzies. And the do-gooders doing their best to put them behind bars.

Sure, there was plenty about the past year that I could stand to forget. And let’s face it, we still have a long way to go when it comes to getting a grip on some sense of normalcy.

And we still have a long way to go in fostering humanity and dignity and grace.

But who doesn’t, really?

I don’t want to think about unemployment rates or war or economic status as that ball edges closer to 2010. I want something uplifting. Something withstanding. Something gripping.

Sorting through old memories, if anything gets me through, gives me hope for the next ten years, it’s in those faces of the people who stood at Ground Zero, during the defining part of our decade, for days on end. The faces of their loved ones printed on their T-shirts should they be found though somewhere inside they knew that might not be.

It was pure evidence of unconditional love, of enduring memory for all that we have and hold, here or gone.

Of survival.

And that isn’t so bad, when you look at the big picture.

Happy New Year, and here’s to better days in 2010.