Cool

I turned thirty this week, and I’ve been thinking, like I might, about Love, and Who I Am, and Leading a Happy Life.  Or really, I can feel these kinds of things swirling around me, as they have been for a while, but this week I haven’t really been thinking about too much of anything, because I have been being Surprised.  First by my sister Grace, who flew in from D.C. as a secret for my birthday. Then by my cousin Erin, who drove up from Portland, where she has wisely relocated from the East Coast, also as a surprise for my birthday.

We all slept together in the Pink-then-yellow-now-beige Palace, the room at my parents’ where all the miscellaneous young women sleep.  It was like it was when we were teenagers, only I mostly felt a lot less hormonal and desperate, and nobody was listening to STAR 101 or any other music much less cool than themselves.  (And, in case this wasn’t obvious, the whole point of this post is to say my sisters and cousins are REALLY, REALLY cool.) And then there was cake, and friends, and another surprise, which is that turning thirty is, so far, mostly a relief, like ah, I’m me and I am living my life and that’s pretty cool.

The Day of the Dead Rodents

Today at camp we buried a mole.  Also a rat.  Squinchy, ever attuned, decided to bring a half-eaten bird inside tonight at dinner time. At camp we also picked up what the kids called “millerpedes” and shook them so the almond smell came out.  We picked up the feathers of a dead gray bird and admired the raccoon skull that graces Aidan’s childhood fort, a cathedral of nostalgia made of old boards and rusted wire and now frequented only by spiders.  None of this was planned of course, but I would say these were the best parts of the day.  I got to explain that most things die with their eyes open — we think of dead people as having their eyes shut, because the dead people we think of have friends.  Also, the mole did not die as it was pooping (a horrifying possible cause of death for this soft little critter), but rather pooped as it was dying.  Five children learned how to stand on shovels to dig.  We decorated his grave with daisy petals, horsetails, crossed white sticks, and a flat stone, which tomorrow we will write something on, assuming the kids remember.  Before we buried it, the kids kept popping up from their lunches to crouch over it.  “Don’t destroy it!” yelled one girl, after a near miss with a shoe.  “It’s adorable!  Can I take it home?”  “No, it’s dead,” I told her.

Meanwhile, one after another of my family has been falling to what we call around here, “The Dreaded Gombu.”  Other people call it the flu.  Well, this isn’t a proper Gombu, because it isn’t the arfy-barfy-run-at-the-buns kind.  It’s more of a Victorian recline-on-the-day-bed-with-glazed-eyes-and-moan type of thing.  I feel it lurking in my neck glands, myself.  So I am off to take one of my mom’s anthroposophic healing baths.  All I hope is that camp tomorrow is as full as today with unplanned magical moments.  Maybe on a different theme, though.  Maybe The Day of Happy Butterflies or The Day of Yummy Berries or The Day of Exciting Scat.  Or The Day Becca Slept off the Gombu Before Nine AM.