Birthday Eve | Silver Streaks and Strawberries
It’s the day before my 39th birthday, and I have 18 minutes before the babysitter leaves. I forgot the laptop in my haste to get to may meeting on time (and also to comb my hair), so I borrow old menus and a pen from the coffee shop waiter.
The sun is warm and the sidewalk bustles with sundress-clad women, bare legs still pale after a cold spring. I ask for strawberries on my salad, settle under a red umbrella, then scribble down year-end thoughts on the back of “Today’s Soup Specials”:
- This last decade started with just me + a handful of houseplants, and ended with me + a husband + 2 kids + 3 old cars + 2 even older boats + a mortgage + a garage full of adventure gear I love + closets full of crap I don’t need. That’s a lot of addition.
- This is the decade when I became an adult: a woman who learns to balance all sorts of awkward-shaped bundles with not enough arms while sometimes wobbling, sometimes sauntering, sometimes sprinting between people and places, most of whom I love but some of whom I don’t (like the grocery store…I hate the grocery store).
I sip my coffee, heavy on the honey, and reflect on what I’m grateful for:
- A son who knows the name of every wildflower we pass on hikes, and who makes me stop at each poppy and peony to smell the “beautifuls”. His sticky kisses and big brown eyes.
- A daughter who plops down in icy mud to splash in the creek, giggling at the goo between her fingers. Those dimpled fingers reaching up to grasp mine.
- A husband who fixes the holes in the 45-year-old sailboat I persuade him to buy, who pulls the ticks off our scalps without flinching, and who cooks us dinner (and usually breakfast, too).
- A brave sister who always says yes to adventures, who holds my babies as close as I do, and who buys me expensive whisky for my birthday.
- Parents who taught me to try my hardest and love me still when I try the least, and who still go camping so they can sleep next to rushing rivers.
- Girlfriends who gather on porches and in cabins and on trails and around meals to heal and hold each other through each season.
- My body, my mind, my smiles lines and grey streak (hell, let’s call it “silver”), which all serve to keep me upright and centered amidst the pull of gravity.
And now I only have 2 minutes left before my alone time is up—never enough time (or sleep) during these longest shortest days with toddlers—so I box my sandwich, down the espresso, and pedal fast on my pink bike with these handwritten words folded inside its rickety rear milk-crate.
As I bike home, I list what we need for the impromptu camp-out tonight with the kids and my sister—a birthday-eve bash on the banks of the Blackfoot River among the pines and willows, camas and cutthroat, where I will dunk naked in the cold mountain water to baptize anew, a new woman still at 39, figuring it all out as the water flows past.
