Let's celebrate quietly............

It's nothing that important. It's just another birthday. 

Just an October day on the calendar. My mother was happy - 

she wanted a child very much. She had me on this day. 

My only sibling, my dear brother, came along eight 

long years later.
I was away on distant oceans for my last two birthdays - first 
sailing between the sub-Antarctic islands of New Zealand and
Australia, then last year crossing the Adriatic Sea from 
Venice, Italy to Dubrovnik, Croatia.
This year I'm right here in my own back garden and, 
although not as exciting as adventuring on the high seas, 
it feels good to be at home with DH, family, good friends, 
and neighbors close by.

All birthdays make one stop and think a bit...reminisce...recall others such as the fun ones of childhood with cakes, candles, wishes and games. Being Autumn and usually wet in England, neighbor kids sloshed through soggy fallen leaves up the garden path, in wellies and mackintoshes, leaving them dripping at the back door. Everyday clothes, no party dresses. The typical English games were played, musical chairs and such. No fancy smancy parties in rented hotel ballrooms with girls in frilly dresses, embarrassed boys in suits, as some of my wealthier little friends had. Mine were always at our small bungalow with a few best friends crammed around the dining room table. We tucked into dainty cucumber, cheese and watercress finger sandwiches, made on thinly sliced Hovis brown bread, and white bread that was healthy in those days, and as always for party fare, the crusts were trimmed off and the garden birds shared the celebration. Colorful bowls of wobbly jelly and cream (jello here in the US), and Mum's beautiful home baked birthday cake, iced fresh that morning, and decorated with the correct number of candles, followed later.

Turning fifty was a big one, a half century and all that silly girlfriend stuff. Black balloons delivered to my office, a few drinks after work with co-workers who all seemed so much younger, and the feeling one was now well on the way to life as a senior citizen. Sixty, a little more traumatic, you actually were a senior citizen, with the AARP sending mountains of mail to your mailbox, driver's license renewal rules changing, plucking grey hairs, chin hairs......wondering why there seemed to be new wrinkles every morning in the mirror, and your eyes still looking tired after eight hours of rest.

But this one is monumental by comparison. Three score years and ten. Seventy sounds really old..........but old is better than the alternative! I can't believe I've reached this number but I'm certainly grateful that I have. There have been ups and downs along the way, issues such as most of us deal with in our younger years, some serious health problems to battle and survive, but so many wonderful things - far too many to even list here, but I assure you they happened and they still do.

So bring on 70 - there I've said it! Happy 70th birthday to me. I'm going to grasp it close and enjoy each day of my new seventies decade.............after all it's a long ten years 'til eighty and I'm not even going there today!