MY BIRTHDAY

{reflection}

Today’s my birthday—my forty-eighth—and like every birthday I wake with a pool of existential questions stirring in my head. Am I headed in the right direction? What is direction? Am I loved enough? Do I love enough? Will good things come? Their opposite? I am an over-thinker, a stuck-in-my-head kind of girl, and this day each year is the supreme head game for me.

Here are some photos from my early years.

1: Day 1, in my parents’ living room, where I was born, with a mysterious dark head of hair, wondering, already, what this is all about.

2: Hopping onto the back of my mom’s motorcycle, in my Harpo hair era.

3: Christmas sweater, Christmas kitten.

4: Leaping.

5: Some grandmother must have gifted us matching pajamas. My brother has always made me laugh.

6: House raising vibes. Pretty sure I had everyone figured out.

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How will I spend this day? Go for a long walk? Buy myself a nice coffee? Plant things in my greenhouse? Work in my garden? Write? (It’s blessedly not a work day.)

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After I drafted the first part of this, my kids woke up and hopped into my bed. My son snuggled with me and the dog; my daughter gifted me a copper, hammered bracelet she made this spring.

My husband brought me a nice latte, some Ocie Elliot on vinyl, and tickets to see Gillian Welch and David Rawlings this summer. To be known and loved? The gift of a lifetime.

What I want for this year?

To be rooted in earth and community and love.

Health and resiliency.

Beauty and art and books that stun me.

Surprise and laughter.

Flowers, leaping, less seriousness.

birthday gifts

Thank you for being part of my circle of community and belonging, either near or far. Thanks for the good work you are doing in this world, to make it more beautiful, more caring, more just. Thank you for reading these words on a morning in late April, as the great world spins. Now go outside, please, for me, and bask in it.

Robin