Wishes
Birthday Party 8/8/10 The week of August 1st through the 8th was full of memorable moments on hot summer days. There were fevers and examinations and songs sung to babies and Junior mints and red roses and introduction to kind ER doctors and a check up where piles of skin and wax were vacuumed out of ears as I watched in wonder on the TV in the small, comfortable office of the ear man who took out the blocks that had been clouding out sound.There was an afternoon spent with the aforementioned parents for an hour or two. This was the first time I had seen my folks, who met forty some years ago in Tacoma, in the same place in my adult life and it, was, cool.My skin slowly healed on itself after several days hanging out at the ranch at Mom’s and she gave me “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” I must have eaten about eighteen cupcakes in seven days. A beautiful strawberry shortcake held a hefty sway of birthday candles while, in the wake of Elizabeth’s somewhat sudden but anticipated absence from this lifetime, we toasted to not regretting another birthday come upon us. 
Gifts filled the backyard and included balloons and earrings and fragrant bath soaps and compact disks and books. The air was filled with laughter and pleasant conversation and questions and answers and fun. Couples married for life came, and coupes unmarried and re-coupled came. Friends from high school and college co-mingled and it was just a wonderful, completely surprising day. Sandy brought Oreo cookies and a card. Nicole brought flowers. Lilly send an exceptional birthday cake candle. It may have been one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. It made me cry. And laugh. And smile. And shrug my shoulders in quiet awareness of what it feels like to know you are lucky. The sunlight warmly washed the backyard in a private but restless wonder and it shone in the shiny locks of woman and men alike.