you say it's your birthday

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago.  The mixed blessing of an end-of-summer birthdate is that any celebrations must be extended to compensate for friends and family gone out of town to catch the last few rays of summer sun and fun.  This also gives me pause to think about another year passed and one to come more thoroughly than I might if the whole shebang stuck to its official twenty-four hours.

Each year, I use my birthday as my own personal New Year.  It's the time I choose to reflect, resolve and restore (to me, January 1 is just another date on a calendar).  Looking back on my 37th year, I am overwhelmed by everything for which I'm grateful.

Since the last time I blew out my birthday candles, I have made my first trip to France.  I spent a month living in a flat in Paris, across from the Jardin de Luxembourg and just down the street from the Sorbonne.  Went to the town from which one side of my family is reported to have come, a town old enough that Joan of Arc lived there.  Visited my cousins in England - a 36-hour trip to England, how amazing.  Saw art and history that made my eyes tear up and my soul sing.  That month did more to restore my spirit than many other things I've done in a long, long time.

This year, I started my new career.  Things are not yet official but they are on their way.  I know I am good at this work.  I have a good opportunity to get some support in starting it up, soon.  A couple of setbacks and disappointments recently, now realizing they're learning opportunities in disguise.  This is going to be good.

I lost my Nana this past year.  She was two months shy of her ninety-fifth birthday.  Though her passing was truly a blessing at the time - she was no longer any semblance of the vibrant, fun-loving woman I'd know all my life, and the stress of her care was taking a serious toll on my mother - I lost someone who was essentially a third parent to me as I was growing up.  Every day in grade school, I went to Nana's for lunch.  Every summer, I spent my days at Nana's house and around that neighbourhood.  She's one of the people from whom I got my love and talent for music.  Up until a few weeks before her death, she still played a mean ragtime piano version of any song you could think of.  I miss her.  Every day.

The most amazing thing that happened to me this year is all about people.  Last year around my birthday I had an epiphany and made a vow to myself.  I wish it could be more poetic, but it all really came down to, "I'm sick of games and of not being my own biggest fan.  I'm going to be myself, only myself, all the time and I will no longer worry about what I think I should be or do, look like, or act like.  Fuck it."  And it was like casting a magic spell.  So many new people in my life, so many new things to do, and just the sort of each that I've always wanted. 
While all these people are exciting and meaningful in their own way, two stand out like wonderful shining stars.  The first one is a woman whose spiritual path is very similar to how I'd like mine to wend.  She is intelligent, erudite, soulful, hilariously funny, a fan of the arts - including silly horror movies, and, thankfully for me, an early riser who doesn't mind making the occasional wakeup call to a non-morning-person friend. 
The other of these two people is someone I knew of for a long time, but never in a million years would have imagined being this close to.  He is smart, genuine, thoughtful, and a wickedly funny smartass.  Also so ridiculously talented that I really, really want to hate him but just can't.  More than all that though is that he's there for me like I hope I am for him.  It's been a really long time since I could say that about anyone who is afflicted with a penis, and it's amazing to me.  He's also the only person in a very long time who can make a smartassed comment about me that makes me laugh in spite of myself.  Bastard.
It's almost unbelievable to me that when I think of my last birthday, these people would not even have registered on my radar.  Now, I can't imagine my next birthday without them.  They are also the two people in the world who called me on my birthday and sang to my voicemail.  This makes me unbelievably giddy and I might just save those messages forever - they make me grin from ear to ear each time I hear them.

Other stuff is still in progress - getting my health and my home organized, as well as finding unimagineable wealth without working for it.  I suppose there's always next year to talk about that.

Happy Birthday to Me!

And by the way, Laura and I are making these cupcakes tomorrow for my party this weekend.  Yumms!