Birthdays – Taking Stock

I love birthdays, birthday parties, and the celebration of life that accompanies the whole idea of birthdays. As I have gotten older, I was surprised to find that not everyone enjoys celebrating birthdays. I’ve learned that in some families, there is a casual attitude towards birthdays and in fact, they may barely be acknowledged. Like so many of our expectations and habits, how one celebrates birthdays harkens back to how we were raised and what our family culture taught us was subjectively “right” with its traditions and implied and explicit attitudes towards birthdays. Recently I learned that in Danish traditions, birthdays are celebrated with great fanfare and extravagant tributes that honor the person celebrating the anniversary of the day they were born. I have some Danish ancestry in my heritage, so maybe that is why, in our family, we celebrate birthdays with great panache.

I celebrated my birthday this week. This year as I turned 69 years old, and ushered in my 70^th year I took time to pause and take stock of my life. As I close this 7^th decade of my life over the next 12 months, I wanted to notice the complexity of life; the textures and hues of daily living. I woke with ease on my birthday morning, fixed a delicious cup of coffee and sat down at my writing desk, which looks out at my sloping back yard and the frozen pond that is home to a variety of wild life all year around. Without intention, I was filled with a deep gratitude for this very moment. Quickly, as if being asked to notice by some unseen Divine voice, I began to witness a lifetime of moments. Each moment had a rich story that surrounded it with details, colors, faces, multi sensory depth, and each one was richly personal. I began to write. Words. Each word was written slowly as it represented the scenes in my life that have contributed to make me who I am. As each scene revealed itself, a word appeared and I wrote it down. Gradually, I had a list of words that helped me take stock of my life, delight in the variety, and expand my gratitude.

I am sharing my list of words with you. As you read my list, I invite you to let them trigger your own memories and deepen your appreciation of the richness of the life you have lived. Perhaps you will begin your own list of memory words. I have vowed to continue to add to my list of word memories as time goes on. This is a wild and wonderful ride.

Journal Entry, January 9, 2019

Happy Birthday to me. 69 years on this earth, in this body, in this soul.

Stretching, growing, reshaping, moving, birthing, dancing, bending, crying, laughing, swimming, sitting, writing, drawing, singing, loving, hugging, holding, digging, scraping, weeping, weaving, painting, building, sleeping, yearning, wishing, hoping, dreaming, fishing, cooking, resting, reading, talking, healing, cleaning, bathing, breaking, washing, sweeping, groaning, grieving, gazing, growing, planting, healing, fixing, diving, rhyming, skating, plowing, shoveling, sleeping, praying, thinking meditating, greeting, traveling, listening, planning, burying, lifting, packing, wrapping, capturing, photo-ing, kissing, leaving, joining, mowing, smelling, shopping, walking, hiking, eating, living, aging, wrinkling, slipping, sipping, pouring, serving, dressing, learning, deepening, befriending, fearing, receiving, gifting, opening, closing, accepting, wondering, ignoring, rejecting, letting go, indulging, creating, continuing.