My Bitter~sweet Birthday...

I turned a year older today. It's been an amazing couple of days. I floated the river with my lovely, munching on local fruit and drinking super~sized Bloody Marys on a raft built for two. I napped and was fed dinner by a witch. Denny's gave me a free breakfast. I ate it with my three favorite people on the planet. My babygirl gave me the gift I so desperately needed...to be heard. My boy hugged me extra hard. I was invited into the forbidden zone where I was offered a strawberry made even sweeter by eating it in that place which I thought I had lost forever. I hung out with my momma then hung out in my hammock. There was a long bath and a book that I haven't set enough time aside to read lately. Dozens of facebook messages, texts, calls and an email offering up pieces of a soul I also thought I had lost forever. My soul sister called me after way too long that then felt like no time at all. I made my list of things to do before my next birthday...after evaluating last year's...and fell a little in love with where I am today, this crazymazing life and the future too.

Through all of that, I had to keep reminding myself that it's okay to be happy today. My birthday this year falls on Father's Day...and I felt myself slipping often into that risky, tricky place of sorrow and regret. I miss him. I grieve the lost opportunities and I regret the missed ones...the missed words as well. It's been a bitter~sweet day and the only saving grace has been that there are beauty~full things going on in this family...in his legacy...that he would be incredulous about and delighted by if he were here to see them.

My greatest gift this year has been that of family, gifted to me by a father whom I didn't get to know nearly well enough. My greatest gift this year has been my sister opening her heart to me and a man raised by my father but with whom I share no blood...who called me "family" and burst my heart wide open.

My New Year/Birthday List:

Go to them. All of them.
Say things. Lots of things.
Listen too. Lots of that too.
Salute the sun. A lot.
The moon too.
Hug.
Kiss.
Hug some more.
Map my desire. Follow it.
GET THAT DAMN PASSPORT.