When this decade started, my life was very different.

I was in my fourth year as a newspaper columnist, enjoying my job more than I ever had at any time. I had just turned 50, but I felt pretty good about it. My wife and I had enjoyed our vacation the previous summer at a Club Med in Moorea, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.

[caption id="attachment_206" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The longest decade"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-206" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/parker-300x235.jpg" alt="The longest decade" width="300" height="235" />[/caption]

Our daughter was a sophomore at UCLA, and our son was in his first year of high school.

The country was still in what people now call a "pre-911 mentality," and the biggest issue was whether Bill Clinton had destroyed his legacy with his Monica Lewinsky escapades. The stock market was soaring, with the NASDAQ due to peak above 5,000 in March 2000.

Most folks outside of Chicago had never heard of Barack Obama and most folks outside her own family had never heard of Sarah Palin.

Was it really only 10 years ago?

And have we really reached the end of a decade called the "aughts?" It's strange how things come around. When I was a kid in school, we used to read about a decade called the "gay nineties." And one called the "roaring twenties." We didn't realize we were growing up in the "fabulous fifties" and the swinging sixties."

I wonder what we'll call the one that's ending right now.

It really hasn't been a bad decade for me and mine. Sure, there were some serious setbacks on the job front, but my lovely wife and I are still married, still in love and working on our 18th year of marriage. Our children are finished with school and are both married and into their careers. Pauline has already given us our first grandchild, and little Maddie has quickly become a bright light in our world.

The coming decade will bring retirement and relocation, more time for each other and more time to do things we enjoy. I'm looking forward to it, because I think I can honestly say that during the 40 years or so I have been an adult, each decade of my life has been better than the one preceding it.

Life has been good to me that way.