It is my birthday today.
I could have called this post something akin to “Like a loaded 45” for that is my new age but in truth I am not fond of guns nor the noise they make. Instead, I prefer to think of this lovely quote that my friend David Terry sent me by the author Annie Dillard:
“All my life, I had been a bell, but I never knew this until I was lifted and struck.”
Isn’t that gorgeous? And while I think that we all have the possibility for several periods of chiming throughout our lives, I am feeling mighty positive about this birthday. For several years now, there is the element of “I am still here!” tucked into the celebration but also, if you are a believer in astrology, Susan Miller has predicted that I have one hum-dinger of a year ahead.
Yet I already feel so deeply grateful. I am sitting in a room that is all of my own where I can do just as I please. The windows are open and I can see out over the red-tiled rooftops to the hills beyond. The birds are twittering away, hopping from tree to tree. A cup of Lady Gray tea is steaming on my desk and Remi has taken the dogs out for their morning walk. Later on, we will go to see some art as is my birthday tradition and have lunch out. Tonight will be a quiet dinner like we like. Candles will be lit as they always are and not just to be blown out while making a wish.
Yesterday, at my favorite brocante in Eygalieres, one of the owners told me, “You are entering into a wonderful age. Between 45 to 50, you really have the chance in front of you to work out whatever demons you have left. All you have to do is decide to do it.” It is interesting advice. And I certainly feel very conscious of the sense of opportunity in front of me, beckoning. I will take that extended olive branch, thank you.
So today is my little party. Another day it will be yours. May our best present be to carry a sense of awareness, of not taking that internal bell and its inherent possibility for granted, for if we listen it just might be ringing throughout the year…
A new birth year, a new home, a new town – how wonderful ! very best wishes, Joan
Happy Birthday Heather…it sounds like you have a wonderful day planned. I have to agree….45-50 is a wonderful turning point. To be honest, it just keeps getting better with every year…really!! Best wishes…Jeanne xx
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Live it up! You’re only 45 once!!!
And to say it with Mark Twain:
"Whatever with the past has gone, the best is always yet to come."
Bon Anniversaire, dear Heather!
***k
I believe I have made it in time………..the clock has not struck midnight over yonder!Is it possible I can remember the 40th?At a friends place……..with a pool?Was that 40?Seems like yesterday……….HAPPY DAY to YOU and the family.Your rose is beautiful did you pluck that from the garden?
Happy, happy birthday and lots of wishes that your new home brings you much happiness.
HaPpY bIrThDaY, dEaR hEaThEr, HaPpY bIrThDaY tO yOu! Somehow I missed your last, beautiful post, but not this one! Hope you've had te loveliest of days.
Insofar as birthdays and horoscopes go?….(and I kid you not)…..The birthdays of my partner's father, only sibling (a brother), and BOTH grandmothers (who were very close to the family) ALL occur during the three days surrounding Christmas. Arranging a birthday celebration for any of them (given that it was always within one day of Christmas) was so difficult (and quite frankly, anticlimactic) that the family settled, many years ago, on simply celebrating all of the birthdays during one special, Summer weekend. Everyone agreed that the younger brother got to decide where they would go.
SO?……this family of engineers, literature professors, and epidemiologists would find themselves spending one entire weekend per year at some alarmingly-Americanized "Sea World" or "Star Trek" amusement park…..selected according to the whim of a five-to-twelve year old boy (apparently, he was stripped of this droit de seigneur when he hit puberty).
According to Herve, however?…..it was always great, silly fun…particularly since none of these places was ever at all the sort of place any of these remarkably sophisticated, French adults would ever have chosen. Thus, no one (except the youngest boy) ever got what he/she explicitly wanted, but everyone got what they really wanted….which was a fun, careless birthday weekend for the family.
I think the tradition went on for almost twenty years, until my brother-in-law went off to college and the grannies started going off to Paradise.
—-David Terry
Bonne Anniversaire … first in your new home! Good beginnings 🙂
Happiest of birthdays to you, Heather! I hope your day, and the year ahead, are filled with good gifts of life and love.
oh, ok Leo is the word not Lion…//: