gifts

“What did you get for your birthday?” It was always what we asked each other as kids, as though the gifts marking the celebration were the only way we could get a feel for an event we hadn’t seen. “Two ‘My Little Ponies’ and a Barbie doll” explained a lot about how a birthday went back then.

If someone had told me on my 20^th birthday what I’d get for my 30^th, I wonder what I would have done. Maybe rolled my eyes and hoped for something more exciting. Maybe not. I don’t know. It didn’t happen.

As I sit here, though, on the morning after my 30^th birthday, I wonder. In that moment before you blow out the candles, when you know you’ve got one birthday wish for the entire year, and it had better be good, and quick, because everybody’s waiting, how often is our only wish “more of the same”?

This is what I got for my birthday: A beautiful sunny day on which to clearly see my life and blessings as they really are. I sat alone in the garden and looked at my beautiful, sometimes slightly ramshackle house and listened to the laughter of a child being tickled by his father that drifted through the open window.

I thought of the years we’ve spent painting, laying floors, mowing the lawn, playing in the yard, growing a garden, raising a family. I thought of the things that we still have to do. A list longer than my arm that includes house projects, things we want to do with our children, things we want to do together, plans, dreams. And I thought of the quiet place where we live, with peaceful, shady woods and sunny pasture, a place where time himself seems to hold his breath and cup his hands around us while we carefully raise our children.

I thought of those children, those four tumbling, happy, surprising, exasperating, blindingly brilliant souls that have come to stay with us for a while, and all that I have learned, and have yet to learn, from them. I thought of my husband, of the quiet and gentle way that almost ten years have taught us to love each other. He gave me a gift card for my birthday, so that I could buy books. He gave me the last almost-ten years, learning that a gift card for books would be the perfect gift for me.

And I thought of the challenges that even this life brings, of those beautiful, unexpected things that force us to grow. Without lemon juice, lemonade would just be sugar water. It’s wonderful to have had enough challenges to know that whatever the current trouble may be, on the other side is a life that is as sunny, and even richer, than the one we’re living today.

My father, wandering across the country as usual, came to see me yesterday evening. My family, assembled a continent away at an Easter celebration, called to sing "Happy Birthday" over the phone. To love and be loved like this is as wonderful an experience as I have known.

Now, the morning after the day that marked the 31^st year of my journey here, it’s gray and raining. Another gift. Rain for my garden and a day I’ll have to spend inside with my family. And although it’s gray now, and yesterday’s birthday sun has gone, I can still see what I saw then. For my birthday I’ve been given a life I might have been jealous of if I had known about it ten years ago, a place, physically and otherwise, full of joy, hope, and peace.