“This too shall pass…”
Kelly Salasin, 12/8/11
It’s my favorite day of the year, and I wake… depressed.
Still.
The glass has been half-empty for days and nothing seems to shift it. Not rest, or yoga, or a dinner date with a good friend. Not the gym or the supplements or the love of my family.
On the eve of my birthday, I wake every hour, for no reason. Like a baby, I lie there with eyes wide open, as if it’s daytime, instead of 2 or 3 or 4 am. But I feel no child-like wonder for the world, just despondency at my body’s chemistry gone wrong.
I consider slathering myself with the progesterone cream that sits beside my bed. What would happen if I used a cup instead of a quarter teaspoon?
December is my month. It always has been. The snow. The magic. MY birthday. In November, I begin to delight in finding something at the grocery store that expires on 12/8.
12/8. It’s such a perfect combination of numbers that I expect everyone to marvel at it, but they act like it’s just any other day.
This reminds me of something an old friend once said: “Your own child looks perfect, but everyone else’s kid is just a little off.”
Even depressed, I appreciate my birthday. Even though my favorite things bring me no joy, I feel gratitude. Even though I want to weep for no reason at all, I think: This is my BIRTH day. This is my life. What a gift.
I look down at the ring my mother wore when she got pregnant–the tiny diamond on a thin band that was the only thing my undergraduate father could afford, and I feel proud. Someone created me.
It perplexes me that not everyone feels this way about their own special day; that they’d prefer it go by unnoticed. The noticing isn’t the point for me. It’s the claiming. In fact, it can feel like your own special secret if no one else knows (like when you first find out you’re pregnant.)
On December 8, I don’t want to go to sleep because then it will be all over; but I do, long before midnight, remembering that it will still be my birthday out West, and maybe even further.
As I snuggle into bed, I discuss the International Date Line with my husband, and fantasize about chasing my birthday around the globe.
It’s embarrassing to admit that at 48 my own birthday is still this important to me. Shouldn’t I have grown out of that by now?
On the morning of December 9th, I wake to find it all over. The gloom is finally gone, and so is my special day.
Kelly Salasin, December 9, 2011
Happy Birthday Kelly from another 12/8 birthday.
Here’s a birthday song for you
As part of my week-long celebration of my 64th birthday, i performed in a trapeze recital in Brattleboro.
Cheryl
http://www.themeditativegardener.blogspot.com
ANother 12/8-er, Happy B-day Cheryl.
Fun arrangement!
I learned this song from the Brattleboro Women’s Chorus when I moved to Vermont.
We balance it with the feminine too, “Some say that long ago, God could not dance to save her soul…
Like you I hold the anniversaries, remembering, decorating.
But my feelings about it have a different nature.
They are a cocktail of duty, dread, anticipation and hope.
I like the way you do it, never grow out of it, keep holding them for all of us.
It helps me to mix my drink with more hope and less dread.