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The 36-hour birthday
How to have a 43rd birthday a month after arriving in Australia:
Send the kids to their first day of school. Watch one or maybe both fighting tears as they get out of the car and make the long solo walk to their new starts. Feel simultaneously proud and powerless.
Go home and have a little empathic (and probably birthday crash) meltdown. Cry in your bed a little.
Get up and go to a movie with your love, who has taken the day off (and who patiently waited for the carthartic tearstorm to blow over). Have lunch. Go shopping.
Get an ipad. Officially and enthusiastically join that fan club.
Happily chat with parents via phone, who have lovingly ushered you through 43 years since that noon birth in New York City in 1969.
Pick up the kids from school. Feast on their stories and observations and--especially!--the knowledge that everything will work out. Remind each other that friendships and new lives are not made in one day. Or one month.
Walk into your favorite Italian restaurant for dinner. Hear the waitress say "Oh! Welcome back! So nice to see you again!" Mentally give yourself a high five.
Go home and decide we're all too full to have birthday pie. Offically extend birthday celebrations to the next day.
Wake up to heart-filling facebook messages and birthday emails. Relish and savor each little word morsel and maybe revisit them a couple of times throughout the morning.
Exchange chat and gossip and affection with Lauren via the phone.
Do some laundry. Go on a walk. Look forward to pie tonight.
Enough. Now go and embrace the year ahead.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Reader Comments (9)
wonderful. I am glad your birthday was full. :)
Happy Birthday!
Simply Amazing. You. Your ability to express yourself. And to once again help me feel a little like I am there myself. Thanks.
A birthday AND first day of new schools on a new continent all in one day? Seriously. You are entitled to lots of tears. Thought of you lots over here all day. Happy birthday!
You're awesome Annie! And life only gets better. :)
Happy Birthday! How fun too to get to switch seasons for your birthday too. I wish you all the best in coming year. Your willingness to share you life is a blessing to mine.
The greatest gift we have been given is our families. So glad you are part of mine! I am cheering for you all in this crazy, scary, exhilarating, fun adventure. Please tell the kids I am so proud of them. Oh ya, and any time they want to come back to the US they can live with me :) teeheehee!
I am sorry I missed your birthday, I am trying to stay away from Facebook and the computer, fb is just not uplifting. I am glad you had a great day and I love the uniforms. It was so nice to meet and talk with you, you are a kindred spirit:)
Happiest of Birthdays... What an adventure!