Spicy Dragons & Dinosaurs

All I can think about today is last year. It is not awful, but I am rather weepy for a 10th birthday. I have kept it quiet today. I think Julia may have wanted more, but she is not complaining. We woke up to presents -- the play mobile spinosaurus that Julia really wanted. She knew immediately from the size of the box, opened it with glee. A dino book that she can read with pictures done by an interesting French artist. And a new copy of the Tangled coloring book (we lost the other one during out trip out east.) which thrilled her! She played with these new toys, I did some Wii exercises and she joined me. We had breakfast and played some more. Before lunch we ventured outside and it is frigid. We walked the dog, went shopping for a cake, went to Noodles for lunch, and then on to an early show of Jack Black's Gulliver's Travels. We did find a tiny dinosaur cake at the local grocery, so I will light a few candles after dinner and sing. It is not much for a birthday but it is what I can give her. At least, today.

I feel that I am better able to pace myself. To do what I can do. To not expect more than what I have to offer. No guilt. And no heroic effort that is really unnecessary. There will be years of big parties. I hope years of friends. Just not this year.

I have an early evening fire burning in the fireplace. The cat siting on the sofa arm as close as he can get to the blaze. the sun is setting outside and the color at the bottom of the sky is almost the same as the flames the lick the logs.

It is a hard day. I miss David a great deal. The remembering of how hard I worked last year to make it all work, relying on my sureness that by today, all would be fine. We would be a working family again, and we would really, really celebrate. I am sad about the effort, the open heart that believed so intensely that I could bend the whole world to fit my plan. I am sad for myself from last year. This was not the way she wanted it to turn out.

At the same time, and mixed in with the sadness is a profound gratefulness and a joyfulness that is about the present is. And all this mixing is has made me so very weepy today.

I look forward to a good piece of dinosaur cake this evening!