#30 TATWTD Happy Birthday, Me

November 23, 2019 – Saturday

Ah! I open my computer and in the upper right-hand corner (ding!) comes the announcement: Today is Barb Pine’s Birthday. And so it is. I woke (4:48am) with that thought, and here was my second (as I climbed over the bed’s end-board so as not to wake our twelve week old puppy, Scooter, whose sleeping crate is situated on the floor next to my side of the bed, and who would love to wake and keep me in playful company in this early hour. But, no. I have morning thoughts I wish to record in my mostly neglected 2019 journal, and so to coffee and computer I quietly, ungracefully, adjourn. 

My second thought, crawling from the bed: I have been in a pitiful mood of late. Why, I wondered. My next thought: I am so utterly grateful. And Yes, the word “utterly” was in the thought. My next, before I began mentally listing “for what,” was, “I am 80-years-old. Is this possible?” The accompanying disbelief pushed me to—“Grateful for what?”  So I listened as the brain of me brought stuff to mind.

~ David, the college student who offered me a ride home from church two weeks before my fifteenth birthday, my boyfriend by the spring of that next year, my husband after four more years of like and love, and tussles of wills and opinions and preferences and beliefs and attitudes and habits that kept our dating years  virginal, my fighter pilot hero, my mentor, my dearest, most loyal friend, my nemesis, my challenge, my comfort, my reason for supreme sorrow and joy, my life partner for whom, to whom, not often enough I say, “Thank you, how very much I love you.” I am so grateful.

I had made it nearly to the coffee machine by the time thoughts of David were added to by thoughts of my children: Three there are by birthing. Three there are, or maybe more, by inclusion along our family’s way. By birth, two sons, one daughter.

~What ever can I think with a brain that works so automatically through chemicals and connections, how is it possible for me to express how I admire and love and enjoy and benefit from the three offspring that sprung off so freely from my body that sometimes, I wish they felt obligated to feel obligated to their mother. She is aging, after all. But, no. They prefer to treat her as a healthy human whom they love without undue obligation. Darned healthy humans. I adore them. I treasure memories of their childhood (during which I grew up). I admire each of them, these three now-very-adult, very admirable, people who for a brief time so many years ago grabbed sustenance from my body, took some training from my authority, rightly freed themselves from those things, and through the years have become dearest, dearest, treasured, admired, deeply loved friends. How utterly grateful I am for these three and those they have brought into my life. 

~By the time I made it through morning’s first things, by the time coffee is in the “Gutsy-Savvy-Wise Woman” mug, and I am seated in my office chair before a window that reveals the morning’s quiet and darkness, I have added to the list dearest friends to dogs I’ve loved; I’ve added music and stars and books and the sound of surf and crusty breads and, oh gosh yes, butter; and beef cooked rare and, concerning food, nearly anything that crunches and begins with the letter ‘carbohydrate’; And God. Goodness, will I ever manage to comprehend the origin of everything material and mental, the Reality we praise and curse, use for conflicting modes of worship, and in whose honor, supposedly, we go to war? 

~Oh yes, my parents, lucky me, and the sound of wind in trees, and the reminder that at the core of my being are three things, and today I am grateful for all three: the love beauty (wherever, however, it is produced), sadness (deep it is, and ever a part of me), and the most fun part, selective curiosity. I am without barriers grateful for those three permanent parts of me.

~The grandfather clock in my office strikes 5:45am. And, “Well,” I say to myself (whatever self is, since I sense that I have a brain and a body and a will and character and personality. I have those, but then, who/what is I?), “Self,” I say, “You are now 80-years-old. You lucky, lucky woman.