It was a really great day. All of my favorite, (available) people gathered around, seemingly thousands of phone calls and cyber-messages wishing me well, yoga, dogs, kids, food, and presents that showed a true understanding of who I am. Pretty much heaven.
Birthdays are sometimes weird, so much pressure to have a good time, to design the perfect day, to make note of the important event, and then the day comes and it's still just twelve hours of daylight, and a bunch of regular stuff (dog feeding and butt wiping) going on as well. And if you are shy, or at all humble, things get even trickier as birthdays can feel like such a "look at me!" kind of day.
But somehow I was able to avoid the usual pitfalls. Merely thinking of the day as a special one set the tone, so that even when nursing or picking up a pile of dog poop, things felt different. Also, my mom is with us, and having just celebrated my own daughter's birth I was more aware of what birthdays mean to parents as well. Thirty-four years ago, on a sunny afternoon, my mother was pushing me into the world with her seventies hairdo, a tan, and no pain meds. I think this year might be the first that I realized my birthday involved another person, so that too colored the day in a brighter shade.
And Nathan is awesome. I could rest assured that the day was not going to pass by unnoticed. He loves me. He really does. My friends too, with all of those beautiful ladies gathered around there is no way the day could go wrong.
So another year goes by. And life is good. Sure there are things I want, changes I yearn for, but all in all, the world is bright and shiny.
