Birthday photos 2022

 

As some people know, my love for selfies and narcissism on the Internet are over. My deadline was my birthday and these are my lovely Birthday photos, taken in my garden this morning. I wasn't even going to post any and then I decided to have some fun. I took about two dozen of them, all silly, all messy, and I hit the vivid filter on a few. One can see it here. Otherwise I am very gray. Laughing. I've been aging naturally my entire life. I don't dye my hair. I don't hardly wear any makeup, none here but a little lipstick. I'm a grandmother. I told someone today that I don't think I wanted to grow up and because I was always teaching or around bands, I have retained my silliness and youthful feelings. But I am getting old. Even if genes have been kind to you, one feels aging. Your bones feel it. Your legs at night, after a long day in the garden, hurt. Your hands, especially if you are like me, an artist and writer and gardener, and have used them your entire life, a lot, really ache. I broke some bones in my left hand in high school, my senior year, and I can feel those bones right now. They ache badly at times. My skin is thin, there are wrinkles everywhere. My hair is going to be white soon. I'm fading even though I don't like it. No one gets out of this place alive. This is why I posted the photos, another reminder to my grandchildren that I was here and even once upon a time, a girl of 17 with all these dreams. I still dream. That's my gift. But I have to work hard for those dreams. I have to remind myself that I am lucky I woke up this morning and not to take anything for granted. Nothing last. And I won't last. It's all okay. I've helped bury a lot of people who died younger than me.

Look around you. Everyone you meet on the street. Everyone you know. Everyone you love. Everyone rushing around you in the same city or country is going to die. And I am writing this on my birthday because I am lucky to have a birthday, to be aging and still feel love, hope, and a kind of innocence I felt as that wild child of 17 years of age.

That's my birthday gift. That I can find joy and wonder at my age, with all I have experienced, with all I know to be true.

I hope if you are reading this, anyone, that you can find joy, too.