Meandering Thoughts

Meandering Thoughts
Summer

Friday, March 19, 2010

We Are Always The Same Age Inside.

Well, after nearly a month of finding ways to celebrate spring, it is going to be here tomorrow.  The first day of spring.   Well, that is what the calendar tells me.  I know it didn't suddenly happen, spring has been growing daily, becoming spring doesn't happen overnight.

The same can be said of my birthday.  Today is my birthday, I didn't become who I am today, overnight.  I have taken sixty one years to become who I am today.  It has be a slow and steady journey.  I began my journey on the Medicine Wheel in the East, the place of the rising sun, the beginning of all things new, a season of spring.  Maybe that is why I find such joy in Spring.

I wonder how I came to be this age so quickly.  I can remember things so clearly in my mind of fifty years ago, as if it were yesterday.  I remember thinking when I was a teen, that thirty was OLD.  I changed my mind about that about the time I was twenty-eight.  Of course, when I reached thirty, I was sure fifty was OLD.  I think I wish I was fifty again, that seems young to me now......   What seems old to me now?
I'm afraid to say, I fear as soon as I say it, I will become it.  I'm not ready to go to that place.

How does time pass so quickly?  Have I really been married almost forty one years?  Good grief, we dated when I was sixteen, married when I was twenty!  Have we really raised three wonderful children and now have six wonderful grand children?  Sometimes I'll pass a window and see my reflection and wonder who that person is!  She looks so much like her Mother.  Then I understand it to be my reflection.  I see myself in my daughters too, if not in looks, but in the way they can move and run after the children.  I really don't understand what has happened to that person, when did it change for me?  It didn't happen over night, it crept up on me and changed who I thought I was.  I am still that person, inside.  I still think I am young.  I am shocked when I look in the mirror and see more gray hair than I thought I had.  I am surprised when I look at my hands and no longer see the youth in them.

Don't get me wrong, gray hair doesn't bother me and I love that my hands tell the story of the work they have done through the years.  My knees are creaky and I wear glasses, but that is not what I am, it is a part of who I am.   I still love everything to do with nature, I just can't get out and walk the trails as far as I'd like.  I can  sit quietly now and do things I would never had patience to do when I was younger.  I love diving into an art project and spend hours trying to create something amazing.  There are so many things left for me to discover.  

Today I find myself on the Medicine Wheel, looking to the east, seeing the beginnings of new things, the season of spring.  I am here today and happy to be here again!  Happy Birthday and Happy Spring!

3 comments:

  1. Oh Cynthia... you will never become old, because you will never lose your AWE!
    Happy Birthday!
    Wisdom and patience are incredible attributes to grow into. They bring so much peace and are the true gift of getting older.
    love ya

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  2. Happy Birthday!

    What a wonderful day to celebrate it! I'm sure you took in some sunshine, listened to some birds, and noticed more signs of spring!

    You will alway be the yee-haw rider in my eyes!

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  3. Thank you both, my heart is smiling. YeeHaw!

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