A Happy (and Sad) Birthday

Today I turn 39. It feels strange, this first birthday without my mom, unsettling. Someone is missing from the birthday equation. The entire last couple of weeks have been difficult — the light is shifting, the nights are growing colder, and the changes remind me of last year and the way her health began to deteriorate with the end of summer. I imagine autumn is going to bring even more of these memories, more grief I'm going to have to figure out what to do with, an unwanted gift that doesn't fit well, isn't the right color.

Ayurvedic wisdom advises bringing "a flame of awareness" to any emotion that needs to be purified — a flame that will ripen and cook it, liquefy it, and eventually burn it away. How much awareness this actually requires and how long it needs to continue I have no idea, but I suspect I've been simmering on something that needs more of blow torch. Or how about 39 little candles, 39 flames of awareness on this day of both Happy and Sad Birthday?

Missing my mom won't distract me from the many, many, many things I have to be happy about today. First of all, I'm taking it off from work and the weather is gorgeous, the sky cloudless, the air filled with the sound of late summer crickets. J is home too, so I'm not alone. Cards in pastel colored envelopes arrived in the mailbox this week, even a card from my dad who seldom remembers what month it is anymore, let alone anyone's birthday. An e-card found its way to my inbox from my sister-in-law-to-be in China. J and I drove up to Brattleboro, VT for the afternoon on Sunday for window shopping and white wine and wood-fired pizza and espresso creme caramel for dessert, yum. This morning he woke me up with a card and small gift and a handful of flowers from the garden - fern and drying globe thistle and a small sunflower. I'm looking forward to the year ahead, the opportunities it's going to bring.

Last year, like every year, I called my mom on my birthday. To make her laugh I told her about all the not-so-subtle hints I'd dropped to J about what I wanted him to get me (like this post, and yes, he did). "Well Mel" she said, talking to me from yet another hospital bed but suddenly sounding more like her old self, "Why don't you just hit him over the head with the thing?"

Ha! That's the mom I miss, always making us laugh with some straight-faced sarcasm, but every time I think of the way she said that I smile, a little gift in itself.