Hey, I can't leave you there...

sitting out on my back porch...just sitting, not thinking or pondering or anything else, mostly feeling the cool air on my face and staring at the trees and looking at the sky between their branches, not doing much of anything....I thought about my last blog.

My dad lived a decade and a half or more after that--saw his grandchildren (which my mother never did) lived with us for a few months before going to a nursing home in Hamden for a year or two before he died. Lots happened. Maybe I'll blog about that some time. But my relationship with my father improved--still improves....I love him and appreciate him more each day. Hey, I was 25 and an asshole, not the wise old bird I am now....so don't bum out on that.

And there is this: I can sit on my back porch on my 63rd birthday...just sit...just feel and see and hear whatever is there to feel and see and hear.

That ability may be the beginning of JOY.

I don't think of myself as a happy person, though I am happier than 95% of the people I know or meet. So, maybe I am happy--but I'm too pondering to call it that.

But I am a Joyful person. I tend to almost always notice every moment of my life with an intensity and a thankfulness and a pondering that gives me great joy. Great Joy.

Even when I'm 'unhappy' or 'depressed' or 'anxious' or 'distracted'--even then I am joyful.

I truly love, love, adore, honor, am humbled by and grateful for simply being alive.

I like being alive a lot. And I hope I'm not wasting more of it than I'm enjoying. I'm about to go wash out my sinuses with 8 ounces of salt water--not pleasant, but I'm sick and need to. And it will be a feeling I will acknowledge and honor--but not like....

So, being 63 is a lot better than not being! A lot better.

I am joyful.

And I encounter my father in dreams often these days and it is usually wondrous. Maybe he's forgiven me for being an asshole.

And maybe I'm becoming a wise old bird sooner than I expected.

So, in spite of that last blog, fret not. I am joyful to be alive.

Happy birthday to me.....