What a day
“What a day to visit Seattle
What a day for San Francisco
What a day, holy Toldeo
What a day to get in the air and go.What a day to give up smoking
What a day to absorb
What a day to welcome a baby
And to begin breathing.”— Greg Laswell, “What a Day“
I’ve been playing this song on heavy rotation lately. Perhaps because I’ve been meaning to put together an itinerary that includes both Seattle and San Francisco. Perhaps also because the melody is very soothing on my exquisitely frazzled nerves.
And maybe it’s just having one of those birthdays yesterday in which I had to stab the snooze button of the now-faintly ticking biological clock with a butcher knife, but I got to hold a tiny, beautiful baby today — a seven-week-old little girl with the world’s bluest eyes — and all I have to say is damn.
I don’t know what I was put on this earth for — but it’s got to be FAR more than this — and maybe it’s that. Eventually, that is.
I’d like to not have to put the cart before the horse. And I’d be happy with a well-hung stallion if I had to choose one or the other. 😉 Although I’m still shooting to have both!
The reason this birthday has been so hard for me is that it’s exactly like the last one. Same dilemmas and fears. Same stupid feelings about the same stupid things and maybe even the same stupid people, if I may be so bold. 😉 Same friends, more or less, although the same inability to see very much of them. (Although I got to see some of them — and meet even more — today. So, huzzah!)
Bottom line: Same cozy spot between a rock and a hard place. The only thing different, it seems, is where I spend my daytime hours.
And I know fundamentally that’s not true. Well, it’s all true but it’s not the end of the story. By far. I mean, I’ve been going to church for several months and I will consider baptism if they don’t have to drown me like a river rat. (Supposedly my grandmother baptized me as a wee lass, but I think the symbolism of doing it now would confirm all that I’ve been working toward.)
And anyone who knows me, knows I abhor ritual and inertia and “same old, same old.” I feel suffocated. I feel like my skin is too small for my body and I just want to rip it off and shoot high into the sky like a really expensive fireworks display.
I struggle between the advice I often get to simply “give it up to God” and my own instinct, which is to just DO something already — even if it’s wrong. And hoo boy, has it been wrong on many occasions. But it’s been right, too. I’m no dummy — I know exactly what I want. But while I won’t start singing the lyrics to “Unanswered Prayers,” there is something to be said for a greater force knowing better than you what is best for you.
You just wonder what He’s smoking in the interim, sometimes, though!
I hate to end on a pithy note of “I’m going to be OK.” But I already am OK. And I will continue to be. And someday, I’ll be better than OK. I think my turning-34 freakout yesterday was attributed to one of those, “Holy shit, is this as good as it gets?” moments. Because let’s face it, that’s wholly unacceptable, to not go up from here.
But I will. It’s all good. Most of it is out of my hands. And I am not planning to fuck up what IS under my control.
“Bring on the evening hours,” I cry
“Bring on the evidence of my life”
“Bring on the evening hours,” I cry
“Bring on the evidence of my life.”