Today is my Birthday

I woke up at 9:30. I laid there a while, looking around at the ceiling and walls, noticing the shadows of the things that hang around in my life; an ornament in the shape of a swirling letter "K" my friend Ivy graced a gift she gave me a couple of years ago. It hangs from the switch of a lamp. Two little, gilded angels affixed to each end of the two dangling chains of my ceiling fan. One bears a star reading "HOPE", the other "JOY". My mother sent me those a few years back. The reflections and little rainbows cast from the ornate, gold antique mirror. Well, it wants to be an antique. I got myself up and turned on NPR. We are daily companions, rain or shine. I went to the kitchen to get a drink. I just stood there a while, admiring the sun through a leaf, so intricate, complex and sophisticated. So gorgeous with the sun all through it, all those veiny secrets exposed with light.
I am 32 today. There's no denying it. All my veiny secrets are just what they are. The sun will find me, whether I prefer it or not. But I felt something distinctly different this morning. I have been feeling rather old lately. But for some reason, 32 sounds awfully young. Why does it sound younger than 30? 31? I wish I understood myself. Anyway, I began getting ready. I realized my delicates were all in the hamper. I had to do laundry! I would be dreadfully late to church now. I decided I'd have to attend a different session. My usual 10:30 would have to be forgone. 2:30? I can make that; no problem. So phone calls started coming in from friends and family. I love the feeling of being loved. I put a load in the wash. I ate left over Reese's Cheesecake from last night's surprise. What a day! Bliss in many ways. Brunch with the dearest man alive, watching chickens and roosters, baby sitting a tiny 12 week old angel, my apartment with so many of my favorite people in it; Heather, Jason, Molly, Megan, and then a HUGE surprise! My favorite girl in all the world; my own Christy, Toolie Woolie! Came in from Corpus and she didn't even tell me! And there she was with her baby! Claire! And Ivy, too! We were all laughing and talking. Heather and Jason just had their engagement photos taken. Gorgeous them! That's why I was watching the tiny baby, so her mommy could take the pictures. We eventually got to dinner, around 9:15. I had Steak Diane. I made a joke about wanting to be like Princess Diane so I'd eat a steak bearing her name. It didn't work. I'm no more royal and no less charming. (ha!) So, now my unmentionables are clean and dry. I will go to church soon, sing, pray, listen, learn, think. Then I will go to Ivy's. There will be Moroccan pot pie, savory salads, and herbal iced tea. Then there will be cake and ice cream.
It hit me today, we are all famous to someone. We are being watched. There are eyes upon us all. Others need us to fulfill certain expectations. No, we can't be perfect. But we ought to be good. We ought to be so good that we can feel it radiating in our lives and into the lives of those who happen to love us. Maybe even into the lives of people who don't. The notion of being famous; allow me to explain. The public at large may never know that I love dark chocolate, that I detest pop music, or that my favorite movie is Kiki's Delivery Service and I watch at least part of it every single day, but my friends do. Most people will never know that my idea of a perfect evening is eating half price sushi with one or two people I love, watching amateur opera, and laughing for hours about our ill-spent youth. Some people know that the only magazines I read are National Geographic and The Ensign. Not everyone knows that these are THE most important things to me: the worth of souls, the sanctity of women, the power of the written word, the beauty and promise of each child, the miracle of music, the influence of art, the presence of God, the eternal nature of the family, and the reality of love. Some people will never know and never care that my worst fears include issues relating to every kind of poverty, certain types of bewitched dolls, and all kinds of infidelity. Some people know that I have certain dreams and ambitions; I want to feed my hungry brain and get a PhD in Children's Literacy or Literature---have yet to decide, I want to be a professor, and I want to find myself on a mountain in Mexico during the butterfly migration someday. Some people know these things. I want to say thank you for knowing. Thank you for caring. Thank you for talking. Thank you for sharing your likes, dislikes, fears, dreams, and ambitions with me. Thank you for advising. Thank you for forgiving. Thank you for not judging because you were too busy loving. Thank you for your voices. Thank you for the times you were silent and the times you were loud. Thank you for your gestures. It is all precious and noted, remembered and cherished. To my friends and family, I love you almost more than I can stand. I love you with so much joy it seems to split me open! I love you in ways that make me feel elation and guilt; elation because you are so impossibly miraculous and guilt because I don't know what I did to deserve you. It's bliss. It's radiant. And most of all, it is real. Thank you for being so illustrious, so gorgeous, so famous, famous, famous to me. Your autograph is all over my life, all over my heart. Happy Birthday to Me. I love all of you so much. Thank you for making my life such a life. It's yours. It's mine. It's ours. Thank you.

Anadromous....

.....it's a word I've been dying to use ever since I learned it a couple weeks ago. It refers to the process some fish naturally take when they migrate upstream to spawn. Salmon do this. They fight the river's coursing current, fight the natural flow, watch their other fishy friends go with the flow and swim with the greatest of ease as they fight nature on the outside and risk all to embrace it on the inside. It's hard and many salmon never make it back. Some have heart attacks and die, such is the strain on these little anadromous wonders. But those who make it spawn in glory. What a natural wonder!
Do you feel it? Yes, here comes the metaphor. I'd like to consider myself anadromous in a certain way. There is the natural flow of things; cultural, societal, biological. It's all very tough to swim against but I simply cannot ignore what's going on inside me, no matter how the currents rage around me on the outside. This inner truth always trumps the outside influences, whether they come from a book, a magazine, a billboard, a song, a voice, a joke, an institution, or a whole relationship. Even when the influence comes from my own mind or my own body there is a deeper truth still, far more quiet but somehow more poignant and piercing. I see some of my peers, going with the flow. Some of them think I'm just crazy. I get all sorts of warnings. "You're going the wrong way! What are you thinking?! You're gonna kill yourself!" What they don't know is I am not headed toward death but toward the only life worth living.