Happy Birthday To Me

I’m sending this out to the universe this morning with deepest gratitude for all the things my life has been made of so far.

            For being born into a family of people who welcomed and celebrated me from the very beginning. Who taught me and tolerated me and loved me no matter what.

For my parents’ wisdom, integrity, sense of humor, and stories. For my brother’s and sisters’ patience, indulgence, and examples.

            For my earliest friends, young and old. For my first church and community in Glencoe, Alabama,  and everyone there, who put up with me, and showed me love beyond any reason I ever gave them to.

           For all my teachers from first grade onward. Thinking of them and the good things they brought into my life still lifts my heart.

            For finding the young man I would marry far too young and still making a go of it for thirty years and counting. Such dumb luck. I had a strong feeling he was special from the beginning, but I had no notion of how deep and wide a river he is. I am thankful every day.

            For my children. My greatest teachers after my mother and father, the loves of my life after my husband. For the second childhood they brought with them. For the adults they have become. They are good people. Kind-hearted. It’s like I won the lottery.

            For the greatest gift my husband gave me; time with them. Their whole childhood to enjoy. He worked long hours, and agreed to do without many things in our early years so that I could spend my creative energy and attention on our children while they were very young. For me, that is a pearl beyond price. Bergman and Bogart will always have Paris. My children and I will always have San Pedro.

For everyone’s children, everywhere. They wake up a tired world. Seeing things through their eyes keeps my heart young. I’m grateful for time spent with them, grateful to share the world with such people.

For all the animals I've had the privilege to know, beginning with Lady,  all the way to Scout and Jackie Chan and The Devil Herself; from the ones who took care of me to the ones I've taken care of. Animals are such wonderful creatures. I have been lucky to have almost always had pets and access to the natural world.

            For the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met there, the stories I have to tell. If you are one of those people and you’re reading this, thank you for being a part of my story, and for letting me be a part of yours.

            The universe is filled with wonder, and I’m glad that I was born into it, if for no other reason than so I can wonder at it. I cannot believe how fortunate I am to have been born, and to have lived so far in a world so wondrous.

            I may not have loved every single minute of it. There have been moments of dental work and a few other trying times. But overall I just have to be one of the luckiest little so-and-so’s in all of creation.

          

            Life is so sweet. And so short. And so precious. And I have known such sweetness, and been shown much kindness. More, I think than others who may be far more deserving. I often have a vague feeling that I am getting away with something. If I die today, just this, so far, just all of this, will have been enough. Anything else from here on out is icing on the cake. Happy Birthday to me.

Has had her cake and eaten it, too

        Thanks for coming. Come again soon.   

            Leann

        

The Carpets of Hartsfield

Saying goodbye to my grown child was one of the most disorienting experiences I've ever lived through. Talk about cognitive dissonance. This was written after the exit of my youngest child and only son. I'm posting it today in sympathy with a great, life-long friend, Jackie, who just delivered  her only girl, our Kristin, to a university several states from home. 

A million miles of carpet covers the floor at the Atlanta airport, and the walls are lined with art. Time expands and contracts here.  All around us people hurry along wishing for more of it, or sit and wait, wishing for less.

In an invisible cone of privacy I say goodbye to my child, my last one, my boy.  Touching his forehead at the hairline, I smooth back thick strands. I can’t help it.

I have to reach up so far to touch his head now. There, just there, is a small whorl of hair, like the eye of a storm.  The first time I saw it was the day I gave birth to him.

Photo by Chelsea Lindsey

Goodbye.  

For him, the word is a portal, an opening, the beginning of his new life at university, out in the world on his own.  For me it is the closing door of a house that I don’t live in anymore. I lower my hand and take a step back. I think of all the things he doesn’t know yet. I breathe in. I breathe out.

The walls of the airport in Atlanta are lined with art, and a million miles of carpet cover the floor. In an invisible cone of privacy I stand on one small square, alone, an island in the great ocean of people all around me.

Goodbye I say, goodbye, goodbye, as nineteen years and most of my life turns.  He smiles and waves. Then he faces forward and dives headlong into the tide.

Our boy.

Knows now there's never an end to it.

 Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

               Leann