Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Today is my birthday, and so far I've celebrated by going to work and listening to my kids scream for the better part of the afternoon (one with a double ear infection, and one with and unidentified four year old infection that is about to be seriously addressed). But now both the girls have given their mama the best gift they could give - they are both asleep, and I am enjoying the luxury of a quiet house and some time with my thoughts. Not to mention the fact that I have escaped the dingy basement that was my place to blog, and am now sitting on the couch (which no longer is used as a dresser I might add) and looking out into the world. I am thinking maybe we'll be so lucky as to get a good fire going this evening, and I can enjoy this new space, drink some tea and write. Which is so different than most peoples' desire to drink some beer and go crazy, but alas, I was born in the dark month of December, and it seems my fate in life is to go inward. Anyway...

Today is my birthday! 35 years ago today I tumbled into this earthly existence from wherever I was before, and commenced this life I now live. Today at 9am (the hour of my birth) I was lucky enough to be sitting alone in a beautiful space, full of light and warmth, and felt so lucky to be here, and so amazed at the souls I've met so far in my life, and how the course of my life has come so far. It wasn't long before little bodies started filling the room, (not imagined bodies, the real little bodies of the kids in my class) and the moment was gone, but it is amazing sometimes how much a flash of time can hold.

I'm going to back up a little here, because the day leading up to my birthday held a lot as well. And end to a beginning so to speak.

So yesterday I deposited the Australian at Logan airport, and since both my passengers slept most of the way there, and my lone remaining passenger quietly listened to music on the way back, I had a lot of time to think about things. There's nothing like a drive to get the thoughts moving. Passing through landscapes and weather can do amazing things to the soul.

But I digress again. Maybe I should back this up even more and say that it was really great having Paul here. I joked about it when he was here, saying he was my assistant (he was awesome with my kids, cleaned the house, and cooked a bunch, among other things...) but the reality is that it was just great to have him around after five years of not seeing him. It's easy to forget how much someone means to us when they are out of sight for so long, and I'm glad I was reminded of what a special person Paul is, and how lucky I am to have him in my life. Two weeks is really such a short span of time in the entire view of things, but it felt like Paul was a part of our lives for an eternity - like he belonged here - and I have to admit, it was hard to let him go. Like that flash I mentioned above. Sometimes a short period of time can be so transformative - it can hold so much.

Anyway, after Paul left to catch his flight, I took Ophelia out of the car and walked over to the edge of the rooftop we had parked on - and looked out at the view of the city. After a cold, dreary morning the sky had opened up when we arrived in Boston, and the glare of the wintry afternoon sun gave the city an other worldly effect. I scanned out over the buildings and streets letting all the memories they held fill me up in my very center, and I breathed in that airport feeling - one of change and going places. Then I looked at little Ophelia's eyes, so bright and clear, taking everything in for the first time, and was really in awe of all this world has to hold for her. I have been alive for 35 years - five or six of them I don't even really remember - and already my life has held so much. Every place I looked at off the rooftop that day brought memories flooding back into my being of all the amazing souls I have encountered in my life, and all the morphs my own soul has been through. And that's just Boston!

As I drove home a little while later, the sky almost instantly grew eerily dark again. I let other memories from other places wash over me and reveled in them for a while until a massive orange sun appeared in front of me, setting below the dark clouds, and reminded me what I was heading towards. I told Matty all of this when I got home, and he responded by saying that driving towards a sunset usually signified an ending, not a beginning. And my response to him was that endings always lead to beginnings. Which is true. But what I really meant, was that I was driving towards something beautiful. A beauty just as stunning as the beauty behind me.

So enough of my blathering on and on. Here it is, in a nutshell. There are times in my life when I just want to hoard everything - all the people, all the memories, all the beautiful souls in my life. I wish that I could live all my lives at once, and not sequentially. I want to raise my family in the woods, while at the same time living in the city. I want to be settled and stable, while at the same time being a transient and free. And most important, I want to be able to always be with all the important people I have met in my life. Doesn't everyone?

Fortunately, this is not the design of life. We need to let go to expand, and I had to let go of Paul once more. His life is through the glass doors on the rooftop in Boston, down an elevator, onto a plane, and over an ocean where his Myra is waiting for him. And all the other amazing souls I have encountered have their destinies as well. And although I cannot hold them physically, I can always hold them in my heart and in my being. These meetings with people as we walk the earth are so overpoweringly beautiful. It's awe inspiring.

And me - my place is in that sunset. That ending, or beginning, or whatever it is. My place is here by the fire (yes, it's lit and turning out some serious HEAT, and smoke is nowhere to be seen - except out the chimney) with my husband sitting next to me, and some little feet that should be in bed, but are walking down the hall. All the places I've been before are most important because of the fact that they led me here.

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