Fifty Sunrises

This morning I awoke 50 years old.

I saw diamonds in the snow, and a robin alit on my balcony.

A wave of gratitude washed over me before I could lament my age, and the beauty of another ordinary day quelled the fear nipping at my ankles.

Clouds passed by. Weak winter sun fell on familiar objects I hold very dear, giving them a fresh glow. My deceased father smiled from a frame as if to say, “You got this, kid. Make me proud.”

I have sucked the marrow from each of my 50 years, leaving dry husks of memory in my wake. I have laughed and loved and left marks on my skin.

I have taken in the stories of countless strangers, making friends along the way. I have shared stories of love and loss and suffering and redemption. I have wrestled with words until their skinny black shapes united in some kind of meaningful pattern that speaks a bit of truth.

I have loved with every cell in my imperfect body. I have given myself with mindless passion and accepted the crumbs of another’s affection as the only sustenance available. I have turned my back on fruitless love and torn myself away from the suffocating needs of someone I could never satisfy.

I have walked a thousand miles in unlined boots over pitted roads and untrampled paths. My hem was awash in the mud of the wilderness; my hair was wild with the night.

Despite the frost of a late-winter morning, robins chirp in the bare branches of my dogwood tree. They are fat, perhaps pregnant with Spring’s first brood. They do not mind the rising and setting of that weak ball of fire. They are not distracted by the spinning of this globe. No, they simply sing and mate and fly.

Sing. Mate. Fly.

Oh, that my life were like that.

Then I thought: Perhaps it is. Perhaps 50 is not that unlike 40. Or 70. Or a thousand. What do I care of numbers anyway? Words are where it’s at. Words are what build worlds. One letter, one word can make such an enormous difference.

This morning I awoke.

That is the whole story.