“A happy birthday is measured not in the amount of gifts one gets, but in the amount love one receives.”
Todd Stocker

Today I turn thirteen!
I look at my watch. Quarter to three in the morning. Still another three hours before everyone is awake and up. I thump my pillow and lie back down. My excitement is intense. Birthday mornings have always been a sheer delight in our family. Particularly when it is the birthday morning of an almost teenager!
At a quarter to six I hear Mum in the kitchen making coffee and hot chocolate. These will
be placed on a tray together with raisin-rusks – my favourite! And there will be a birthday rose placed in the little crystal vase. I hope Mum has remembered that the yellow rose is my favourite. Mum and my brother and sisters will carry in my presents, with Dad and the tray bringing up the rear. I hear Mum whispering: “Okay, everyone ready? All right then, one, two, three….Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you….”
My family comes into the birthday girl’s bedroom singing loudly, their arms present laden!
Sigh…how I have always loved birthdays!
I know people that don’t celebrate their birthday. Why celebrate another year added on to their lives? They would far rather pretend that they are not a year older. On the other hand, I have friends that are battling cancer that relish the idea of growing older, of adding years to their lives. For goodness sakes, getting older is part of living. I love birthdays. I always have and I always will.
The day before my birthday this year, I was on the bus returning from gym. The woman next to me suddenly blurted out: “What is the date today?”
“The 29th,” I answered.
“I have a doctors appointment tomorrow. I nearly forgot, ” she explained.
“I also have an appointment tomorrow. It’s my birthday,” I laughed. “That is something I definitely won’t forget.”
“It was my birthday last week. I don’t have any family left now. And…well, I didn’t tell my friends. So it was a day like any other,” she finished.
“That is such a shame!” I exclaimed. “You must tell your friends. You can’t let a year just slip by. One has to…has to acknowledge and celebrate it. Please put that right for next year?” I begged.
She laughed softly and looked out the window.
Somehow that woman seems to be denying herself something. I’m not sure what it is but I think she is the poorer for it. It made me realise how fortunate I am to still have family and friends that know when it is my birthday and definitely won’t let me forget. I won’t let them forget!
On my birthday this year, I woke up and was lying in bed with my eyes shut. I suddenly had this incredible longing for my father. Tears sprang to my eyes. I missed him so badly at that moment. I believe that his spirit was there with me in the room at that instant. It was as if he had come to plant a warm kiss on my forehead and then…..he was gone!
It was so wonderful opening up Facebook on my birthday. I received 290 messages from people all around the world. People who remembered me and cared. I love living in today’s age of social media. I think back forty years before personal computers even existed, never mind Facebook. Would I have received 290 birthday cards? Laugh – definitely not!
When I turned thirty Shirley (Johnson) and Dave gave me this massive birthday party where I had about a hundred friends and family around to celebrate. Nineteen months earlier death and life had been playing tag with me after my accident. Life had managed to outrun death. That party was a joyous celebration for that thirty year old woman.
How can it now be twenty-four years later?
I remember Dad turning fifty. I thought to myself: ‘Fifty years old! Whew, Dad, you are practically over the hill!’
Now Dad’s daughter has just turned fifty-four! Where does the time go? And why does it seem to move so quickly? When I was a child, time seemed to drag by. Now you don’t even see it for dust!
Which is why we must treasure each day we have of this beautiful, frustrating, wonderful, horrifying, incredibly marvellous thing called life. Celebrate birthdays – our 21st, our 90th and every one in between! After all, our birthdays make up who we are!
I love this anonymous quote about birthdays. It says it all:
“Do not count the candles but notice the light they give. Do not count the years; look at the life you live.”

The post Don’t Count the Candles! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

The thing is

The post Love Life! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

Have you got a favourite poem? I can’t say that I have a favourite. There are too many that I love but this one by e.e. cummings is very special.

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth

day of life and love and wings:and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any-lifted from the no

of all nothing-human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

~ e.e. cummings ~

If I didn’t know better I would swear that e.e. cummings   had written this poem exclusively with me in mind.

I have always loved life and I love this world into which I was born. “for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and the blue true dream of sky…..” I thank God for placing me here in this awe-inspiring environment.

“i who have died am alive again today…” For four weeks I was completely “dead” to this world. But I came out of that coma and…life goes on.

How can I fail to acknowledge and to thank “unimaginable You”? It is because of Him that I am alive and it is together with Him that I face each day.

Do I lead a happy life? No, I don’t. No one on this earth leads a “happy” life. My life is made up of despair, joy, frustration, laughter, love, anger – a wondrous mixture of emotions of which happiness is one. But I am not happy. Being happy is having one’s cup permanently full. And I think that takes away the joy of living.

Life is made up of ups and downs. That to me is what makes life exciting. One never knows what life is going to throw your way. Having a standing ovation, being ill, watching your child being born, getting three speeding tickets, being given an air ticket overseas, losing someone dear to you, laughing till tears pour down your cheeks, falling off the stage…..

That is magical, unendurable life. It doesn’t matter how deaf or blind one is. Now

“the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are open”

Will you please share with me some of your favourite poems?

The post i thank You God! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.