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!