Ten years ago on New Year’s Eve, I wasn’t partying like it was 1999. I was hunkered down expecting the lights to go out and mass chaos to ensue. I had been suckered in by the Y2K scare — remember that one? I spent most of 1998 covering the high tech industry for an Arizona newspaper, and Y2K was THE story. It was supposed to be the end of the world as we know it.

That night we stayed home with Bob’s young kids who had come for their holiday visit. Most of the night we sat on our big leather couch, waiting to see what midnight would bring.

As everyone knows, real disaster came, but it wasn’t on New Year’s Day 2000. It happened a little more than a year later on a bright blue September day. And there’s no way that any of us could have been ready for it.

Fast forward to tonight — I’m still staying in, still sitting on the same, now dumpy, couch with a couple of young kids on New Year’s Eve. But I’m grayer, fatter and maybe a bit wiser. Much has happened to me over the past decade, most importantly Boy and Girl. If motherhood has taught me anything it’s this: It’s never the terror of the night that gets you — it’s the arrow that flies by day. The expected horror almost never happens, but the unexpected catastrophe sometimes does, and there’s no way to be ready for it. So there’s no point to live in fear, is there?

I’m not afraid of what 2010 will bring. This is not a night for hunkering down. It’s a time for looking up.