We will not stop celebrating. Your birthday is still as real to me as if you were here on earth celebrating it, complete with lemon meringue pie and a pedicure or a vodka and cranberry and a game of Bananagrams. Would we celebrate in some extravaggant way or be content to take a walk or shop or see a movie?
I've been reading the biography of Maud Montgomery--you know, the writer of my beloved
Anne of Green Gables--and thinking a lot about the simplicity of time spent with a true kindred spirit. She writes,“I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.” If you were here, Mom, I would wish you a day of simple pleasures: crossword puzzles and word searches, iced tea with lemon, the perfect library book, new earrings, easy laughter.
The longer I go on without you, the more I have to work at remembering the sound of your voice. Sometimes I have to concentrate to remember the inflection and the tone with which you spoke and commanded a room. Sometimes it takes a moment before I can feel your whisper on my cheek as you calmed me down from whatever emotional roller coaster I was riding. But then I think about Dad and Grant and the way your strength and perseverance and fierce resolve is ingrained in them both. I think about Claire and how spunky and fearless she is. I smile as I consider Miles and the way he is really interested in people and what they are feeling, just as you were. I'm still figuring out the babies, but I'm sure that Jack and Hazel will reveal the qualities you left to them in time.
You and I were kindred spirits, so I don't need to look far or think too long to realize that I carry you in my heart always and don't go through even a part of a day without you. And I know that what you would want for your birthday is for the rest of us to cultivate those simple pleasures and to laugh a lot and to live and breathe and bask in the goodness of the day.
"here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)" --e.e.cummings
