Orchids! What a beautiful surprise from my son and his significant other!!! They were delivered to me at my office! I feel downright queenly! My birthday isn’t until tomorrow, and tomorrow he and my DD30, who will have arrived out there in L.A. at 6:00 tonight (their time; 9:00 ours) will be calling by prearrangement to say “Happy Birthday!”, and this was so unexpected, which of course, made him all the happier, because he LOVES surprising me. What a great son, eh?

So, I’m older tomorrow, which may account for those feelings of melancholy yesterday, I suppose. Life just keeps on rolling along, no matter what. You’re young, trying to figure out what you want out of life, and then suddenly, YEARS have passed and you’re still not entirely sure. You find yourself wondering if this is all. If you’ve done what you’re going to do and been what you were going to be, and now you’re all through being and doing. I don’t think so. I think I can still do stuff, and can still “be” for as long as I still am, but I do find myself thinking and wondering about what I have learned over the course of this lifetime - what lessons I’ve mastered, what growing I’ve done as a person, or maybe more accurately, as a “being”. I occasionally see notices about people my age and younger dying, and I wonder if they accomplished all that they wanted to do - or all that they were supposed to, since they died early. I think about my kids going on without me - the way I learned to go on without my parents - and know that it’s the natural order of things, but it seems, sometimes, unneccessarily cruel to me. This leaving before the movie’s over…well, the truth is that there’s no good time to go, because it’s an ongoing show, and you’re going to miss out on future scenes no matter what you do. So, I guess this is where acceptance comes in - where you place yourself into the greater scope of all that is, and recognize your relationships and loves as the ephemeral and transient things that they really are - and yet how beautifully they sparkle in that net of jewels that makes up the universe.

I stopped at my DD30’s this morning to pick up her house key so that I can feed the cats (and please pet them and talk to them, Mum) while she’s away. We hugged goodbye and she said, “Mum, you’re feeling so thin”. Interesting, because I have yet to feel “thin”.

We’re spending Memorial Day weekend with our cronies up in the White Mountains. Perhaps by then, I shall flit lithely about in my little EMS shorts and ribbed loden green tank top. And, in the evening, perhaps I will be elegant in something long and flowing and not look like I’m modeling a circus tent. Perhaps. Mostly, I am looking forward to some interesting dialogue and something exotic in the pot luck buffet that “took a rocket scientist to prepare”. I’m also looking forward to hearing what our professor of quantum physics has been up to with his misbehaving atoms and molecules. I think I’ll bring them all a little piece of clay sculpture this year. I need to fire up the kiln; I have too many pieces sitting under wet gauze and I’m getting tired of wetting them down all the time. My granddaughter (age 7) made a lovely little piece when they came for “pasta night” on Wednesday, and I’d like to have it fired and glazed for her when she gets back for visiting her Uncle in California.

I’m listening to some old Cat Stevens songs.

TTFN,

Z