birthday memories

I remember being eleven with scrapped knees and two front teeth too big for my face.I remember my 10th Birthday when the relatives came and we celebrated in the back yard with the heat of July tempered by the huge maples around my house.My mother had fallen down the cellar steps,her shoe caught on a metal lip, and she made me promise not to tell the family.I never knew why but it so scared me.

Wanting to be a grown up,I yearned for thirteen and recall short hair and my first love.This time of my life was filled with unknown yearnings and mysterious feelings.If I shut my eyes,I can almost see myself and wonder at the fullness my heart.Singing ,always singing from this full heart.

When I turned seventeen, the neighborhood boys ,who were friends from diapers or for just a few years,planned a surprise party for me at the local park on Long Island, with handmade,funny cards and plastic jewelry as offerings.I still have these things.

Then later, a Harry Belafonte concert at Chastain.We sang Da-O ,the banana boat song, and Harry said,"only women over forty sing."Dead silence.It was my 40th birthday and I was stunned at how little I wanted to be that and acknowledge it.The one thing out of my control.How awful.

Another one, many years later,the gift of a cruise up the Hudson River with my husband by a childhood friend and her husband ,then dinner after at a Kingston Chinese Restaurant.That glorious river which has framed the story of the state of my birth and my own story ,always.Every summer,over the Hudson on the Tappen Zee Bridge to the Catskills.And if that weren't enough,an e-card from a much loved childhood friend who had made my heart sing.

I love Birthdays and this one is no different.My husband and I are going hiking and then Thai dinner and we will share my day as we have for 47 years and my heart is full and singing.