Today is my forty-third birthday. I have silver-shooting stars dancing on my head, having ceased coloring my hair a year ago. When I stand still and close my eyes, I might as well still be twenty-three, that's how good and at ease I feel in my body when it isn't in pain (yesterday it was, and the day before, but not today). The mind I have today is my favorite mind so far--I like how it has changed over the last year, the new ways it can think!
My sixty-three-year-old mommy is back in Portland, almost completely moved into her new apartment, just in time for the winter holidays. She has hopefully stopped running and is going to stay put, close to me and my thirteen-year-old daughter. She tried life in California with a man she's known since childhood and it didn't work out well, not at all well. So, she's back.
This is the first year of all of my years this time around on the planet that I've not received a birthday card from my dear Gramma Jewell. I can't help but see the absence of a birthday greeting from her as a sort of negative milestone. Without a reminder from someone she probably doesn't remember that today is my birthday; if someone does remember for her, I know she's going to be devastated that she forgot (so I almost hope she's not reminded.).
In addition to preparing for Christmas Eve and Day, big celebrations in our little funny household, we are preparing for my daughter’s big trip to France with her father--they leave the day after Christmas. How brilliant that she gets to live such an interesting, expansive life as a young person. It will be bittersweet for me to drop her at the airport and wish her and her father a bon voyage. It is always difficult, as happy for her as I am.
No comments:
Post a Comment