HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.  ~Mark Twain,

Today is my 41^st birthday. I don’t mind getting older in fact, I welcome it. With each year a little softer, (my personality and my body), a little wiser, a little more tolerant and patient in some ways and intolerant and impatient in others. I have a beautiful family and wonderful friends. I have no time for BS and all the time in the world for people I love.

(Is it bad by the way that the first email I woke up to was ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM WINE.COM’-haha)

I brought my daughter to check out her first apartment yesterday. Funny how cyclical it all is. It is now her time to experience all that life has to offer, and for me to draw on my experiences. I look on with pride and excitement for all that she has waiting for her and I look back with happiness at the life we have shared in this family to get her to this exciting and wonderful place. I consider myself blessed for sure that I have no regrets. Every single thing that has happened in this life has been absolutely necessary to get us to the place we are today. I am 41 years old and have been a mother all of my adult life. Not the easiest of challenges but none the less one that I thank GOD for everyday. We have managed to raise kind, thoughtful, empathetic, funny, great people. People I want to hang out with. (Is that why people have kids? So when you get older and less tolerant of other people’s personalities you have a nice little set of your own people to hang out with?? Brilliant!)

The greatest gift I could ever receive I have already had all along. The love of a wonderful family, from the one that raised me to the one I am raising. Which goes back to the prayer I like to say to myself with every deep inhalation, ‘I already have everything I need, and I am exactly where I am meant to be’. And with every exhalation ‘Thank you’.