My 35th Birthday in Strasbourg, France

I just turned 35! This is going to be the best year of my life. I can feel it. I could feel it the night of my birthday, cathedral bells singing and ringing through the cobblestones and vibrating through the soles of my feet. Like water, the music rose through me to my tiptop branches and leaves. I was nourished.

My Dad reminded me that bodies completely regenerate themselves on a cellular level every seven years . . . by this logic, not one cell in my body is the same as when I was 28. A re-in-carn-ation of sorts. "Carn" meaning flesh; becoming flesh again. Old cycles , tendencies, habits have fallen from me like dust. This body has reinvented itself five times, blooming and blooming from my soul's stalk. I am so thankful to become 35 with my lovely (loving) family at my side celebrating me and my life.


Here's my first sweet baby and me kickin' it at the hotel after I sampled my TWO homemade birthday cakes (both girls insisted on making me their very own cake). I emailed Aunt Cindi saying that both my heart and my waistline expanded exponentially that night...


The Lvov of Love:



The best thing I ever did in this world was make these two little humans!!! And speaking of making things, check out the gifts they gave me...



Akychame spent hours and hours hand-sewing me a pillow with a heart embroidered on it and another tiny heart hanging from the corner of the pillow by a ribbon. I called them "you & me" hearts. It reminds me of the saying, "having kids means to forever have your heart running around outside of your body" (or something like that)...the pillow is me, and Akychame is the heart attached to me by a fine length of ribbon, running around outside of my body.

Lvov wrote me ten love notes, some with poems on them, some with drawings...some just telling me all of the little tiny things that I do that she loves...one has a drawing of us holding hands. Above my head she wrote, "the Queen of Love" and above her head she wrote, "the Lvov of Love." And one note had I love you written over and over again in every conceivable inch. The greatest part is, she wrote exactly 35 I love you's for my 35th year, but she didn't do it on purpose. It was a total coincidence!



My birthday cakes were only alive for two days, but they were very well-traveled. Because the girls wanted me to have birthday cakes ON my birthday, and because they wanted the cakes to be homemade & not bought at a patissier, the cakes ended up traveling in the back of our car from Germany to France, then being carried by Phil & the kiddos from a deep-throated car garage through downtown Strasbourg in the middle of the night past street performers and throngs of tourists; and lastly, up, up, up to our little hotel room and onto the cozy bed; and then, of course, into my mouth, which to the cakes must have seemed an awful lot like descending into the car garage again.

Here's a typical little street in Strasbourg near our hotel. Notice the patissier (below) that we completely ignored because we already had the most delicious cake in the world.



Here's our charming hotel by the Strasbourg cathedral:



The hotel literally buzzed when the bells sang out. They would chime for five minutes every hour high above the heads of puppeteers, acrobats, devils, and fire-jugglers performing below for the "Street Artist Weekend," a gala feast of the senses sponsored by the city.


This is the view from our hotel room. We could feel the energy & excitement of the city through our open windows. Below, people dined at midnight under crimson umbrellas, sports teams sang songs to rival the bells, drunken lovers stumbled by, and here and there a person would saunter slowly by on stilts on the way to a performance. If you crane your neck to the left and lean out of our hotel window a little, your eyes will follow the bells to their source. The magnificent singing cathedral. You have to enlarge this photo and imagine that the ground is vibrating and the air buzzing with a call to prayer.


Little did we know when we pulled into Strasbourg on a total whim (the way we do most of our traveling) that the city would be teeming and burning with the Street Artist's Festival. It was sheer luck and serendipity. If I have a belief system, a spirituality or superstition, it hinges on serendipity. It's the knuckle, the joint upon which everything poetic revolves.

Here's a picture from my favorite street performance - pungent gasoline and rocking bagpipes lit the night on fire (you might want to click on the photo to enlarge):


Even the puppets were playing with fire that night. I couldn't have wanted a more spectacular birthday if I were a queen. It's as if every performer in the city outdid themselves just to entertain me.


Everywhere I turn, I see fire. I seek its warmth and destruction, the smoldering of old modes and skins. It will light the way for me, burning a path warm and smoky. This is going to be the best year of my life.