The Balloonists prayer |
The winds have welcomed you with softness,
The sun has blessed you with his warm hands
You have flown so high and so free,
That God has joined you in laughter,
And set you gently again,
Into the loving arms of mother earth.
I'll be honest, turning 35 brought with it a bit of anxiety. I'm not sure what it was - maybe the sudden appearance of white hair that pops up front and center behind my bangs. Possibly the debut of one varicose vein on the back of my knee. It could have been the realization that the removal of my gall bladder would be just one of many organs that would be removed from me in the coming years. I suppose there is a limit to organ removal, so I shouldn't stress about that, right? There are only so many I can do without. Maybe it was the fact that I found myself doing things I used to watch my mother do, applying anti-wrinkle cream in panicked doses to the newfound lines peering out from beneath my eyes. It may just be that I am painfully aware that I am now only five years from being the very age my own mother was when I yelled down the stairs to her, "Happy Birthday, Old Woman!" on her 40th birthday. I know. I wasn't a very nice child. Regardless of what it is, the vein in my forehead, the age spot on my right hand, the wrinkle above each knee cap, or the tiny turkey chortle under my neck, it's 35 and it's one year older, and it makes me cranky because I was never going to be that person who worried about age.
And I'm not. I've decided.
I'm not because I'm going to choose to *try* and acknowledge and move on each time Zoey spots a white hair and asks if she can pluck it for me. Sure, I'll let her keep plucking them - I can let go of the fact that I'll age no matter what I do, but I don't have to let go of my vanity. I'm not going to worry because I have Steve to help me forget about everything. For my 35th birthday he surprised me with a hot air balloon ride! Granted, it was way back in September, but looking at these pictures takes me back to that feeling when all of that anxiety flew away to the clouds and was replaced with the sheer thrill of being suspended by nothing but a few strings, a giant balloon, and a basket high above the earth - 3,000 feet, to be exact. Thrill. Fear. Horror. Whatever that emotion was, it made me completely forget that I had become one year older and made me remember that I had married my perfect guy!
Aside from the fact that we had to get up at 4am, this truly was one of the most fantastic experiences of my life. We watched the sun rise, saw the world from a vantage point like no other, landed in a marionberry patch, and flew high in the sky propelled by wind and fire alone. Pretty cool.
