51

So, I turned 51.

No matter how I feel about the number or the speed at which time is passing, I do think of my birthday as my personal new year and a sacred time. I love my Valentine’s Day birthday combo and I strongly encourage everyone to celebrate their birthday with big love.

On my birthday morning, however, I felt sad.

I don’t exactly know why. I just felt sad.

One of my big lessons of the past couple of years has been allowing myself to feel what I feel - without judging, assessing, redirecting, or figuring anything out.

So, the dogs got me up early, 4:30 a.m. to be exact, and I realized I was sad.

I let myself be sad.

I listened to some meditation music and made breakfast.

The sun came out, the coffee was hot, and I felt my sorrow begin to dissipate.

Tracy and I went to brunch at a cozy neighborhood place I love.

Then we went to a few of my favorite antique stores.

There were so many beautiful madonnas.

So many.

It’s my birthday tradition to bring one home with me and this year, I brought home three.

I also met another collector of madonnas and we had a conversation about why we collect them and what they mean and how Mary is beautifully subversive because she belongs to everyone and people have their own relationships with her, and we discussed the pros and cons of scattering one’s BVM collection all over the house or grouping them together.

Tracy and I went to dinner that night.

I was lavished, all day, with gifts and messages and love, and by the end of the day, instead of sadness, I just felt overwhelmed with love and gratitude for my people.

My thoughts turned to how my great grandmother Bess was born on February 14, I was born on February 15, and my great grandmother Cora was born on February 16.

No one talked about this when I was growing up, so it’s always just been a fact that floats around somewhere in the back of my consciousness. This year, it seemed deeply meaningful to me.

I am a person who looks for patterns and signs, who looks for meaning in everything, and suddenly it seemed to me, there must be great meaning in this line-up.

Both of my great-grandmothers died shortly after I was born. I remember Cora and remember being at her house, but I don’t remember Bess (who is known in my family as Grandma.)

I know them both only through the stories my mother and grandmother tell.

And I know that Cora Bess was almost my name, until my mother had a sudden last minute change of heart.

The next day at church was our commemoration of Absalom Jones.

Everett McCorvey conducted members of the American Spiritual Ensemble, who joined our choir.

It was amazing.

Amazing.

And I walked home having felt the Holy Spirit move.

Since my birthday fell on the Saturday of a three-day weekend this year, I decided to extend my celebrations on into Sunday, so after church, Tracy and I had lunch at Blue Sushi.

This broke our keep-our-eating-and-entertaining-dollars-downtown rule, but none of the downtown sushi restaurants are open on Sunday, and Blue Sushi has this delicious crispy brussels sprouts dish and a jasmine tea that I love.

Plus, it’s next to the Whole Foods, so we picked up some food from the hot bar for dinner and I grabbed some currents and tropical berries that I can’t get at Kroger.

That afternoon, Rocky and I snuggled up and watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (Rocky slept through most of it) and I realized how deeply I needed those couple of days off of work.

Even though my work is work of my own design, even though my work is my passion and I love it intensely, I need a break every now and then - a sense of being removed from things.

Honestly, I feel exhausted from putting forth great effort with very little result, and even as I type those words I know that I am the vessel for energetic flow, and as such, I am the only one who can shift that feeling.

And I know that as it is with every single thing, the answer is love and surrender.

Love and surrender.

Age is a construct.

This I know.

But I am someone who often feels I have one foot in one world, one foot in another. I vacillate between realities - experience the density and limitations of one, the freedom and expansion of the other.

So simultaneously I experience that the number has no meaning and that the number has meaning.

Life right now feels fast in the micro - a busy schedule, a lot of moving pieces, not enough down time - while feeling slow to stopped on the macro - lack of accomplishment, lack of movement.

My heart, as it always has, spends too much time in longing for things I have not experienced, wish to experience, will never experience.

At the same time, my heart flowers daily into gratitude and wonder for what I have been given, what I do experience.

I’m 51.