sql loader question

I rarely use sql loader. 

I need to account for nulls and set them to January 1, 9999

I am getting errors when I try to use a to_date function in sql loader even 
though I have seen examples just like this on the web. This is 10.2

my_date date "to_date(:my_date,'YYYY-MM-DD')"

I get: ORA-01821: date format not recognized

The following works:

my_date date "YYYY-MM-DD"

I am trying to get to something like this:

my_date date  
"decode(:my_date,null,to_date('9999-01-01','YYYY-MM-DD'),to_date(:my_date,'YYYY-MM-DD')"

I dont think nvl will give me what i want since I still need an "else" mask. At 
this point, I can't get the basic syntax right. 

Here is the header part of the control file

LOAD DATA
CHARACTERSET UTF8
INFILE "load.data" "var 7"
APPEND INTO TABLE my_table FIELDS TERMINATED BY ' ' ENCLOSED By "'" AND "'"
--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l

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