Miracles

(Dunes.  Ocean City, New Jersey.  September 2008.  Photo © Robin)

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.  Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

~ Walt Whitman

Note:  This is a repost, although I’m not sure that’s the correct term.  I’m “restoring” Bountiful Healing, one old post at a time after having privatized most of them when I thought I might be finished with this blog.

I’m sitting in a hotel room on the eve of my 50th birthday, having gotten one of the best gifts of all — a weekend visit with my granddaughter and her parents.  We went to watch her at her swim lesson this afternoon.  I am always surprised by how such simple things — watching the Exquisite Emma swim around in a pool or play dress-up or any of the thousands of other things she does in the course of a few hours — can fill me with such love and delight.

I noticed today that I’ve started telling stories.  Stories about my childhood.  Stories about my teen years.  Stories about my young adult years.  They just started popping out, these stories.  As if I suddenly want others to know something about my history (while I still remember it… !).

I told at least three or four stories today.  I even taught Emma to sing a song her father made up when he was a little older than she is now.  It was a song about riding a ferry across the water to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  We were taking a mini-vacation, and as we waited for the ferry to arrive, C made up a little song which he sang over and over and over… and well, we heard it a lot.  It’s a catchy little song, one that qualifies as an earworm because once it gets in your head, it doesn’t want to go away.  Emma picked it right up and sang her own version of it.

(Is that payback, do you think?  lol!)

Anyhow.

It’s snowing like crazy, here where it shouldn’t be.  Not that they don’t get some snow in this part of the world once in a while.  But not this kind of snow.  This is more like the snow we see at home.  I took a quick look at the radar and see that it’s snowing like crazy at home, too.  I hope the cats and sitter are enjoying it.

Last night a friend gave me a book for my birthday.  It’s the first of the “50” gifts:  50 Things To Do When You Turn 50. I already finished my list of 50 things I want to do, but I’ve flipped through the book and now I think I’ll sit back, relax, and read a little of it.  The first essay in the book was written by Garrison Keillor,  and is titled “Stop Complaining.”  I read it last night a few hours after receiving the gift.  Good advice:  Stop complaining.  He’s right about that.  I’ll be back with a quote or two, no doubt, after we get settled back home.

If you’re looking for a connection between the photo and this post, I don’t really have one other than the photo and quote were sitting in my drafts folder, ready to go.  But I guess there is one other possible connection.  The white sand and the white snow.

Otherwise, I just used this as an excuse to ramble a little.  And to mark this milestone in a small way.  I’ll be leaving my 40’s in a little under 2.5 hours.

50 is going to be fab.