upon turning 43.

yesterday i took a walk in the morning.  it was my birthday.  i was by myself, hustling along rural streets in massachusetts.

i was in heaven.

as i walked, i thought about how it felt to be another year older.  how i thought so much about making my birthday day so full of things i love, of people i want to be with; how even though i'm an adult my birthday always feels so important.  monumental.  as i say each time, "this year is a really big deal."

and yet it's not.  it's just another day, another moment in what will hopefully be my long and meandering life.  

but still, it feels right to celebrate when i was born.  yesterday i figured out it had to do with being an xmas baby.  i was brought home on xmas day, wrapped in ribbons by the nurses (back when moms stayed in the hospital for three days).  present.  gifted, even at three days old.  my parents drove me home in an old car, me in my mom's arms, and when they arrived at their third-floor walk-up apartment my newborn lungs took in the freezing cold air around me, and my position as a advocate for cold winters began.

i adore wintertime.  i've written here before about how it chips away at my soul, not living where we get a true winter snap of weather.  i've come to terms with it lately, but it doesn't mean that i don't immediately engage that part of myself when we come back for the holidays.  the fact that my birthday is inevitably part of that reinforces it to me; welded to my soul yet again.

winter is about rest.  the wide world around me is resting.  the trees stand stock still, devoid of accessories--except for the ones who proudly strut their needles year-round.  the ground smells wet and marshy.  the air that escapes from my mouth as i walk can be seen--can be seen, i tell you--and i get to participate in circulating oxygen to all.  

everything is quiet, and if it isn't, it should be.  

even with no snow in the forecast (60 degrees on Christmas Day--i'm so sorry), i find ways to dig deep into winter.  the world around me seems surreal, made-up.  nature is tired.  so am i.  

there is inevitable ugliness in the decay and dirty snow, and it is there that i find such beauty and hope. i am like that pile of dirty snow, it seems.  i stick around.  underneath the top layer there is a purity, a sincerity, a cleanliness that offers truth.  forty-three years later, i respond to dirty snow, to piles of mud, to broken-up ice near the edge of the pond.  there is nothing resplendent in these images, but to me, they are the simple proof that winter is gorgeous.

by proxy, i am too.