Just another school day

This is how I looked on May 3, 2017, a milestone birthday, perplexed that I have arrived here in such a short span of time, grateful too, for all the blessings that have arrived here with me. The chief blessing is my family, my husband and children, and my wide ranging extended family, the great gift my parents gave me.

I am thinking about my parents a lot today, realizing how young I was when my father died, I was still in my thirties, and how unprepared I was when my mother died, even though she had lived to ninety-three. I was awake in the wee hours of this morning, sitting in the dark living room alone, thinking how strange it was to turn this age in the absence of the ones who gave me life. I remember them turning this age. I was grown and aware. It seemed so far in my own future.

I look at my children now, so vibrantly twenty something, their whole lives stretching out before them, and I know they have no idea how fast this ride goes. This is as it should be. They and their honeys will be coming over for cake and pizza tonight. My husband would have cooked us any meal I desired, but I wanted to keep it as simple as a four-year-old's birthday party. We will also do our now-traditional tequila shots, this time with the really expensive tequila my daughter brought home from last week's fancy gala event that she helped plan for her job. And then all the kids will hug and kiss us and go to their own homes, because it's a school night, and they have work tomorrow.

Outside, it is a glorious spring day, the air soft and blue, the trees newly leafed. Dapples of sunlight play on my face as I write this, my laptop set on a picnic table in the courtyard, cobblestones under my flip flops. I came outside to feel the sky above my head in the cool of the morning, to step purposefully into this day.