Jubilation

I'm so lucky to love birthdays. Mine, yours, ours. It really doesn't matter. I'm just happy to celebrate a life, a year, a decade, a person. To blow on a candle and make a wish. To look around a table when the only light comes from the candle of your cake and to adore and be adored by the faces glowing before you. To receive thoughtful, beautiful gifts and know your loved ones see what lights you up, what moves you, what makes you giggle. To be serenaded with a song who's words may not melt your heart, but the people who sing them mean the world. To hear from friends from all of your many lives and feel the love that has shaped, grounded, supported and stirred you over the years.

Turning 50 is a jubilee, a celebration of a reign, a role, an arrival into my own version of queendom come. For a year, and maybe longer, I will unabashedly call in dreams, reach for goals and make time for wishes; enjoy the world I've created, feel the majesty in my blood and bones; be in love with my husband, my children, my friends, my home; treasure the beauty in both the mundane and extraordinary.

It's humbling to take a pulse on a half a century, to think about beginnings and endings that dot my timeline, to consider successes and failures and measure the what if's and if not now, when's? I've acted on and declined. A round up, if you will, of looking at the whole, the sum of all of the parts, and the parts that make the whole. I'd hardly be the person I am without the glimmers and the triggers in my life, so I must consider all of them. But mostly, I must consider the people in my life that matter. The ones that see me through both the light and the dark, the peaks and the valleys. So, without further a do...

This One's for You

The ones I wake up for, the ones that wake me up

The ones who listen, the ones who talk

The ones who follow, the ones who lead

The ones I choose, the ones who choose me

The ones who dance, the ones who watch (or sway)

The ones who say "yes", the ones who say "no"

The ones who speak without talking, the ones who talk without stopping

The ones who wait, the ones who hustle

The ones who gather, the ones who show up

The ones who do, the ones who teach

The ones who measure, the ones who cut

The ones who dream, the ones who sleep

The ones who study, the ones who know

The ones who cook, the ones who clean

The ones who laugh with mouths open, the ones who silently shake and pee in their pants

The ones who look at stars, the ones who find hearts and horizons

The ones who take you shopping, the ones who shop in your closet

The ones who believe, the ones who question

The ones who sing, the ones who lip sync

The ones who drop in, the ones who call first

The ones who hug, the ones who kiss

The ones who read, the ones who write

The ones who collect, the ones who purge

The ones who meet you in the middle, the ones who meet you where you are

To say I feel blessed, doesn't begin to cover it. But, hopefully, my words above do.

In love, in awe, in reverence,

St. Sunshine