Ten-ten

6 years more than Mozart. 2 years more than Dr. King. 26 years more than Anne Frank. Forty-one complete years of me. Forty-one tally marks stack like a cord of cut firewood, yet I feel like the same insecure tall kid on the top riser of Mrs. Loge's fourth grade chorus.

Alone tonight, in my Oklahoma City hotel room, steps from the site of the Muir building bombing, I type at my laptop, ignoring the quiet distractions of Oprah's guests and the murder of crows assailing the Sycamore trees beneath my eighth floor window.

This is my real New Year's Day, never mind the Roman, Jewish, or Modern Western calendars. No ball will drop in Times Square, but I will celebrate, appraise and resolve all the same. I will toast myself with a tall iced tea (unsweetened) over my grilled chicken Caesar salad in the mediocre hotel restaurant. I will evaluate riches, with family and friends, health and good fortune, my blessings are too many to count. I will resolve to become better – more patient a wife and mother, more learned a professional, and more charitable to me, the tall one singing Soprano in the back row.