Today is my 42nd birthday.

I got my token present from Mike on Friday -- it's a molcajete (MOL - ka - Het -ay) which is a Mexican stone mortar and pestel. I ground up my chipotle peppers for my salsa with it and I like it a lot. Mike spent good chunks of yesterday "seasoning" it, which certainly has shades of "OH, my gosh, he did what?" However, it involved grinding rice and rock salt in it.

On the eve of my birthday...I had a weird set of dreams last night -- mostly, I think of the "here's your life" variety. I think as my brain I was reviewing my life, I was looking at things with my grown up eyes, and not my late teen/early 20's viewpoint. One thing that bothered me a lot is that I have had this recurring dream where someone was writing a book about me -- mostly to criticize my life -- and I am hearing rumors about it. Last night, the dream went further and I was taking a class and someone I didn't know had apparently dropped the book off in the back of the class and asked for it to be passed forward to where I was sitting, but I didn't know that, until I got it passed to me. And I cracked it curiously, and I saw a page that said,"Yeah, and she puts on make up in the car when she's driving, endangering us all!" It had a crayon-drawn picture of a woman putting on mascara. Of course, if you know me, I don't wear makeup, so that was kind of weird, but I used to do that a long time ago, when I was a wild thing. That led me to a whole other train of thought -- also disturbing

After thinking about it a long time, I woke Mike up and talked about it with him.

Mostly, I came to realize everything that I've gone through in my life has brought me to here to this life with this set of wonderful blessings -- a husband who loves me no matter what and is absolutely my best friend, my precious children, my beautiful house, and the joy of being able to garden in my own patch.

I know that a lot of people are having 9-11 memorials today. I am not memorializing the the thoughtless, amoral person I once was nor the thoughtless, immoral people who blew up the WTC. I have God, my family, and a good life. I am celebrating the birth of this new person I became about the time Bear was born.

I'm not a victim any more, thus, I will not memorialize victimization on my birthday, but discovery, joy, birth, and love, because without those, we all die.