Did you have a happy new year?

I really did. And also didn’t. Allow me to recap:

My holiday break started the Monday morning of Christmas week (days I had saved and coveted as a combination of “me” time and “mom” time) with our nanny calling in sick with the flu. It was bad timing – because let’s face it, is there ever GOOD timing for those heart-stopping 7:00 am phone calls? I lost all of the “me” time, yet at least got to enjoy a little extra “mom” time (viewing of the “Squeakquel” movie not withstanding).

Christmas eve, we enjoyed a fun and festive celebration with friends (only a couple of whom can claim legitimate entitlement to Christmas observance; making the rest of us that much more zealous to be brought along for the holiday ride). My cheer was tempered by news from my mother that she is going to need heart surgery in the coming months.

In the following days, we learned that the allergic reactions our older daughter has been experiencing in our apartment needed to be addressed through a home remediation that can only be described as the NUCLEAR option (i.e. steaming, packing up and sealing pretty much everything we own). With a knotted stomach over the impending chaos and expense that we would be enduring right after New Year’s, we headed for a welcome trip out of town, to DC, where we would enjoy an overdue visit with my brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew; friends; and some classic site-seeing. It was wonderful in all of these ways, even as it was hard to keeps the clouds of concern at bay.

It was during a particularly relaxed dinner with both our family and old college friends in Virginia that we received a phone call -that one of the very first friends I made as a mom (and one who went on to become a fellow Executive Mom) had inexplicably died, in what appears to have been a freak accident while getting out of her bathtub during the night. She was found by her 9-year-old daughter, MY own 9-year-old’s friend since they were about 2 months old.

We returned to New York a day later – a day that for most was the first day of work in 2010 – during which I watched while a team of 6 people completely took apart my home, and then went to visit the amazingly strong children of my friend.

So, I hadn’t felt like writing for these first several days of 2010; as the usual electronic tide of optimism and aphorisms rushed in (“This is going to be the best year ever!”) I felt disingenuous simply adding to the chorus, and then it was just easier to say nothing. But it struck me this week that at any point in time, the holidays I had — all of it — is what life really IS, this textured tapestry of joy and pain, fun and frustration, worry and celebration – much as we try to weave it and will it to be just the way we want. The other truth to this compressed series of events is how each reframed my perspective. After the news of my friend, how could I think living through 3 weeks of home hell would be the end of the world? It would be, and I would have to see it as no more or less than this: a tough 3 weeks. One that, fingers-crossed, will make my daughter immeasurably better. My mother (whose heart would seem to be the last thing that needs fixing) is the consummate “make lemonade out of lemons” person; she believes the surgery she will have will be fine, and so I will believe that too. I have my family, my friends, my career.

Oh, and our nanny is back.

I hope you had nothing but a wonderful holiday. And I hope it IS the best new year’s EVER. And if it’s not, we can tell each other that too.