Last week, I completed my 64th year of life. I usually embrace my birthday with joy and celebration.
This year it was different.
I started to reflect on the fact I have traveled through three seasons of my life...each season encompassing about 21.3 years.
SPRING
I must admit, my first season was absolutely magical and wonderful...beyond words...especially in those childhood years.
I had a family in which I felt loved and secure and every single day was filled with joy and happiness. Our homestead was a fairyland of sorts and my imagination had much to be inspired by.
Grandparents played an important role in my Spring and the offerings of the future were limitless.
Late Spring brought the teen years which were filled with thoughts of boys and music and fun.
But as the Spring turned to Summer, I watched four of my fellow Kent State University classmates shot down by the Ohio National Guard.
All of a sudden, life wasn't such an idyllic journey.
I was growing up.
SUMMER
My Summer was filled with thunderstorms. I contracted leukemia at the age of 22 and my life as I knew it, radically changed. I was a young bride and schoolteacher and felt the rug had been pulled from beneath me.
I was blessed with a remission and a faith that helps sustain me to this day.
My positive spirit rebounded and I lived each day with much gratitude.
And then...
My first marriage began to unravel before my eyes.
I buried myself in recovering from chemotherapy, teaching, taking up running, and started to explore my creative self a bit.
The marriage survived for a short time...and with the "okay" from my leukemia doctors, I got pregnant...only to lose my first baby during the first trimester.
The maternal instinct was strong and a year later, I gave birth to Brooke and Noah followed just nineteen months later.
History repeated itself and my marriage was over. I was a single mother in search of another teaching job and trying to survive from day to day.
And then I met Joe.
The rainbow which had started to fill my world after having Brooke and Noah, brightened considerably when I met the love of my life and God-given soulmate.
A new amazing family was formed and I could finally see blue skies after so many stormy summer days.
FALL
The Fall of my life has been for the most part, as glorious and colorful as a bumper harvest.
Joe and I found a century farmhouse with an unbelievable view and moved miles away from all we had known to make a new life for our family.
Brooke and Noah had the best of childhoods and Joe found historical restoration work, which is his gift. I returned to teaching and became a director and teacher of a thriving preschool.
My creative energy knew no bounds and Hittyville was born and is the heart and soul of my artistic life.
Brooke and Noah excelled in school, both earning masters degrees, and are currently teachers. But more importantly, they are the greatest treasures of my life, fantastic human beings, and my very best friends.
Noah found his soulmate, lovely Amy, and their family has extended to Abe...our beloved grandson!
I am now retired from the teaching profession and consider myself an artist in residence...at our residence. Joe is still happily building things and constantly adding on to our unique and awesome home and farm. Our family also includes many four-legged friends who so enrich our lives.
But with the richness of Fall, the beautiful leaves eventually turn to brown and slowly drop...
My fallen leaves included my parents and other beloved friends who had been part of my world for so long. The barren branches have been extremely hard to deal with and I really struggled with the losses as part of God's plan.
With time, my faith has been restored and the beauty of my Fall Season remains precious and dear...yet bittersweet.
WINTER
And now...this is why my birthday was a bit melancholy.
I realized I am ready to embark upon my Winter Season and that journey feels a bit challenging to me.
Physical limitations...my post-polio syndrome...remind me of an aging body.
My many...well-earned...wrinkles are a reminder time does relentlessly march on.
But time has always marched on as part of God's plan.
I need to walk over that bridge into the next Season as many others have done before me and metaphorically speaking, continue to build snowmen, go sledding, ice skating, and use the whiteness of the landscape as a canvas for the creative work I still want to do.
There will undoubtedly be some snowstorms along the way, but the hearth of my home and the love of family will keep me safe and warm.
Winter has a beauty of its own and my next Season of Life will be discovering as much of it as I can...
I am reminded that the miracle of the Changing Seasons is after Winter, the cycle starts all over again. There is no END...just REBIRTH.
I am not certain of what that experience will be like, but I think God left us an extremely huge clue by offering us the Four Seasons of Nature.
So...I am celebrating my birthday...rather belatedly...with my family later today and reminding myself I may need to add some layers to make myself a bit more comfortable this next Season...but I fully intend on enjoying myself and living each moment to its fullest.
Hello, Winter Season...I am now ready to begin our adventure together!
