Happy Birthday!

October is always a big, beautiful month in our house, 1. because we (I) love Halloween and 2. because we (I) love birthdays, and October is chock full ‘o birthdays belonging to dear family and friends.

In honor of my own birthday, which came and went about a week ago, I’m finally flicking the switch on my blog, now about a full year in the making: Write In Place. So, today, for better or worse, a new blog is born and a new birthday gets added to my life’s calendar.

A little something about birthdays, which, as a thing, I find interesting. For starters, they happen whether we choose to ignore them or not because, well, time marches on and because at some point someone invented calendars. Not everyone is a huge fan of celebrating their getting older and older in annual increments, and so not everyone loves birthdays. But I, at least so far, I really, unequivocally do.

I think I owe a big part of my love of birthdays (to be clear, by “birthday” I mean the day someone or something first shows up in this actual world, plus all of that day’s anniversaries forevermore) to the way I was raised. While no childhood is perfect, mine was pretty wonderful, and the way we did birthdays is one example of why. My sister and I were given birthday parties each year without exception—non-extravagant but beautiful celebrations that I surely took for granted then, but that now, remembering them, I count among my life’s most special treasures: a dimming of the lights as a collection of friends and family begins to sing Happy Birthday, and my mom carefully carrying in a cake decorated as per my heart’s desire, and setting it carefully down in front of me, the birthday girl, waiting with great expectation at the head of our dining room table in a chair crowned by a colorful crepe paper bow. Growing up, birthdays were an opportunity to feel extra loved and extra celebrated—to take a big breath in and to make a big wish on the exactly-right number of candles plus one “to grow on”—an opportunity I took seriously back then and that I take seriously today, and an opportunity that I attempt to bestow each year not only upon my own kids, but also upon anyone and everyone within my heart’s reach.

Now though, looking back and having thought about it all a little more deeply, there is second reason for my attachment to birthdays, which is this: they happen on a predictable, reliable, linear timeline in a universe where very few elements of our human experience, good or bad, are/seem/feel predictable, reliable or linear. For the same reason that we, as a species endowed with some measure of consciousness and understanding, created clocks and calendars (ie, that time feels chaotic), I love and depend on birthdays because they anchor me, in a way that feels joyful and true, amidst the vast network of intersecting threads woven into my own daily experience—my own big, round, unruly, tangled-up story. It feels good/safe/energizing/orienting to point to a day, call it special, and honor it each year without fail. It’s actually not too different from my reason for creating Write In Place. This is me, staking a claim, carving out a little bit of secure space and shelter in a way that feels joyful, and then calling it my own.

So, on this good day, here is my message to any who have found me here: cheers to the special thing that deserves celebrating in your life right now, whether it be a birthday, an anniversary, a job promotion, a fork in the road, a step forward, a new recipe, an overdue breakup, a prayer answered, a new friend, a revelation, an epiphany, a connection, a decision, a proposal, a fresh start, a grand finale—whatever it is, notice it, claim it for yourself, and honor it for the spark of joy and/or meaning it represents to you. Mark this day, circle it with a big fat magic marker. Maybe even celebrate it again next year—let me know and I’ll be sure to meet you there.

Happy Birthday to my blog and to me!