Yesterday it was my birthday (it’s so hard not to finish that off with “I hung one more year on the line…” well, I guess I know what’s going to be stuck in my head today,….“I should be depressed, my life’s a mess, but I’m havin’ a good time….”, ahem…but I digress…).

My husband brought me a dozen multi-colored roses. The daffodils and tulips from earlier in the week were sadly short-lived on account of the drying effects of the wood stove. Luckily, roses dry nicely! I love roses… I’ve been tentatively promised a rose bush for Mother’s day, if I can be a good mommy until then… Elijah thinks I can make it.

Elijah made me a lovely picture of a bunny, as well as several others. Iain made several pictures. They made me a giant paper crocus, in a paper pot, with paper dirt, and a paper spray bottle to mist it with. Iain made me a doll! He made it all himself. It’s adorable.

Steve cooked me dinner; a roast, roasted potatoes, and kale with sparkling grape and cherry juices to drink. For dessert he found a casein and gluten-free apple pie.

I had a pretty good day. I spent some time in the afternoon laying by the wood stove, cuddling my baby and reading a good book.

While in truth, I don’t relish the thought of one year less to live, getting older has thus far been a fairly pleasant thing. It’s nice to be pasted the youthful notion that I know everything, or anything for that matter. There is something comforting in knowing that isn’t even possible, that an entire lifetime of accumulated knowledge can never even begin to amount to a drop in the bucket of all that is. Even when you feel like the lines are clearly drawn, that there are absolutely certainties, it’s just an illusion. The lines are constantly shifting, wavering, dissolving, and reappearing in a new form… Nothing is certain, no one has any control, and yet somehow I find that soothing, there is nothing left to do but just be…

I can remember in years, not long past how hard it was to say certain things. How the words always froze on my lips while my mind, shouted at me to speak them. There was so much fear there. Fear of what? I don’t really know… Slowly that seems to have slipped away. Words are words and nothing more. For the most part now I’ve learned to speak my heart and mind. I wonder if others have noticed this change in me, or is it something that isn’t clear to others since it was mostly an internal struggle?

I love to watch people as they go about their lives. Lately, I’ve been noticing women. Women of a “certain age”, that age right around the time were our society says women are no longer ment to be sexual beings. That age where childrearing is mostly a thing of the past. That age where people start saying “she looks good for her age” instead of “She looks good”. In some of these women I’ve seen a certain quality that I can’t quite define. It’s almost a quietness, a self assured, general contentment of the soul. It’s not something that I’ve ever seen in younger women. Nor have I seen it in the women who wear ten layers of make-up in an attempt to convince the world that they are still 22. No, I don’t think you can find this place while kicking and screaming trying to hold on to the past. These women that I’ve watched, they glow! They have this beautiful radiance of power and grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, knowledge of self? For all I know it’s merely my own projections, but I don’t think so. There is just this great depth of beauty there that I think is perhaps not easily won. I hope that’s the path that I’m on. That I will choose to age with grace and be rewarded with that sort of quiet, calm.