Deb: It’s almost October and spring is in my heart. If you are a
regular reader, you know that our spring, our actual May of spring, was decimated
by the sudden loss of a dear and darling friend. His death coloured our summer
with reconnection. We picked up the phone, messaged on FB, and emailed friends
whom we love and adore but don’t see
often. And we did the same for those friends whose frequency of visits
we thrive on. We couldn’t get enough of seeing those we loved or were just
starting to love. It wasn’t just our
thrust of motion that put this connection into place. It was all around us,
with everyone we knew, the need to see someone and make a memory.
This September my parents celebrated their 65th wedding
anniversary. Within days of that, the boy turned 22, and my Mum-in-law had her
birthday with us. And bless their beaks,
it sure kicked off a period of celebration. In the past little while as summer
has turned to fall, we have celebrated love and marriage, the coming of a baby,
and many many friends’ milestone birthdays. And the interesting thing, the part
of all this that made the difference in me, is the fact that they were piled
up! Literally. Calendar-wise. Celebration on top of each celebration. These
events consumed days and nights and allowed only an hour or so between each
celebration. It was like I was being brainwashed in the ways of celebration.
There was a “Celebrate good times, come
on!” cult that I was slowly and unwittingly becoming a part of.
I looked at my schedule, jam-packed with happy events and
panicked around just how the hell I was going to keep all the cards, gifts,
donations, dates and addresses straight. I am the type of person who loves an
orderly day. I love order and I love to achieve it and laud it. But I am also
fine if it dissolves into a pinch of chaos. Maybe ... organized chaos. But this
celebralooza was jammed into every day and night for weeks! Seriously, weeks. So
I dutifully went through the cards and celebratory offerings and lined them up
on the stair-landing in neat piles, whisking each away to its appropriate
event.
This subway sandwich of celebration has been like a sweet dream.
The kind of sweet dreams you had as a child. You would wake up having dreamed
about the candy tree in your back yard. Candy tree. In your backyard. You ate
it and did not get sick at all. These dreams are the very definition of what
you first thought the word dream meant.
This recent period in my life has felt like a very real dream.
The kind of dream you wake up from not believing it was a dream at all. It’s as
if life is circling me and daring to show itself. And all the faces at each
event are 500watt bulbs with wine in their hands. Smiling like they can’t help
it. And they can’t. A baby is coming, a
son is 22, a friend is turning 60 and the vibe is exactly the same. Friends,
family, strangers. Each party was as if it was everyone’s very first party.
Everyone was living unashamedly.
And it makes me feel like the earth is waking up and starting
again. And yet the leaves are falling and the earth is sleeping for a
while.
Just what I needed to remind me.
Barbara: Oh, I love this, Deb. I love the celebration in it, the
appreciation. I love that you finally get a season of joyous occasions and that
they are all so lovely and wonderful and fulfilling. It’s funny when life
offers up a veritable smorgasbord of events for us to feast on. I’ve had
periods of my life like that. I was telling you earlier about getting jobs all
in a row: the whole “it rains/it pours” scenario. But I think, after so much
tragic and awful rain, you deserve the warm sun and the new buds of discovery. Soak
it up, my darling friend. Spring into it!
