45
What a day! What a life!
Yesterday was the first day of my 46th year and we celebrated my 45th birthday! Being a true believer of making every day count, I chalked up another day to make it 16,436 days alive – or 16,733 days if you count conception (We will forego any questions and simply acknowledge that, for some reason, I know the date of my conception – shaking that off, shaking that off)
Soon will be the 17,000 mark and I know I have more memories worth remembering than days I have been alive.
As we sat at dinner I took a look around and realized, this, this is the gift life has given me. My family. Elisabeth, Rashad, Kaylia, Mariposa, Ezekiel, Marc, Aesop (aka my father), and BG (aka my mother)
A gift that brings new memories everyday. Like yesterday when Mariposa was coming down the stairs in the morning and Lis asks, “Posey, do you know whose birthday it is? It is the king’s birthday.”
She thinks for a second then her eye light up as she jumps and runs to me yelling, “Happy Birthday Daddy!”
Or when Ezekiel sings Happy Birthday – more like “Hap urday you” while wearing a paper bag on top of his hair because, of course, everyone knows that a party hat (however made) is the appropriate attire for singing Happy Birthday.
Or when Rashad comes and gives me a real long hug that says more than any card could.
Or when my parents called me at the time I was born (huh, again, sorry) to wish me a real Happy Birthday.
To Lis just being Lis. My wife, my love, my life. She got me the Exorcist Anthology and if you know and her complete and utter despising of that movie, you will understand the significance of that gift.
But it is the gifts they all give me when life happens; that is what makes it a happy birthday. It is what makes it a happy life.