I am grateful for technology that allows friend and family from around the world to know it is my birthday and Facebook, email, text, and phone birthday wishes. It has been a good, relatively quiet day. I rose early to send my daughter on her way back up to school–her unexpected weekend visit was a lovely early birthday present. Then I wrote in my journal, engaged in my morning ablutions, and cleaned up my bathroom and several cluttered areas in my bedroom as I waited for my son to wake up. He had promised to take me out for breakfast this morning, which he ultimately did. It was quite lovely and we had a fun conversation about music afterward. Then I took him to work and spent a chunk of the afternoon listening to the finale of the audio book I’d been enjoying for the past few weeks (the third in a trilogy and I found myself teary-eyed to be leaving the characters behind.) I was treated to dinner by my friends Mary and Lamar who’d discovered that I’d had pie and ice cream for lunch and was contemplating having cereal for dinner. It was quite unexpected and lovely. I suspect I might have had a somewhat glummer evening had they not intervened.
I am grateful to be ending another birthday in relatively good spirits. I have not been a big fan of my birthday for some reason or other. I’m not sure I’ve ever known how to properly celebrate one’s birthday and was often bemused by and envious of people who really knew how to celebrate and be celebrated on their natal day. I haven’t gotten it sorted out yet, but then I’m only 55–middle age–and so I reckon I still have time to figure it out. All things considered, this has been a good day, and for that I am grateful.
I apologize to regular readers of this blog–I’ve been a bit incoherent over the past few days as I have been battling a cold. I read back through a few recent entries and have thought to myself, “Oh my god what were you talking about here?” I can claim delirium and leave it at that, but I apologize nonetheless. I hope to return to coherence in another day or two! I am grateful for the faithful few who stick with me through good blogs and, well, not-so-good ones, and who spend time each day contemplating the blessings that are present in their every day lives. I have been doing a lot of writing over the past several months–some for public consumption, e.g. this blog, as well as my morning journal writing. These bookend writing experiences both help me prepare for the day and then reflect on its unfolding and all that happens in between. I am grateful for words–written, spoken, sung…all add such a wonderful richness to my existence.
I am likewise blessed by the many wordless experiences I have over the course of a day: listening to the cacophony of sounds outside my window on the first few mornings it was warm enough to leave them open at night, watching with rapt interest as the eagle pair tends to their eaglets in a nest a few thousand miles away, feeling the breezes blowing off the bay and the warmth of the sun as I walk around Chavez park with my dog. These are such moments of grace and peace that language is completely unnecessary and if anything becomes awkward and clunky in woefully inadequate attempts to describe them. Life unfolds moment by moment, and I am grateful for those moments in which I am able to recognize just how blessed I am.
