My good friend turns 50 tomorrow! She is one chronological week younger than me but in attitude she is far more youthful.
The image above has been popular on the internet recently and I love it. My friend is definitely in the front row but I am pretty sure I am in the third. Given a few champagnes, maybe the second. Still I am so grateful for her friendship because it is probably through her influence that I even got on the rollercoaster at all. Left to my own devices I would still be standing in front of the clowns dropping ping pong balls down their throats.
My friend is funny, generous, compassionate, talented, articulate, artistic and enthusiastic. She is blessed with a gritty determination and enduring decency. She has a surprising sense of indecency as well which keeps us on our toes. I shall keep my recollection vague but one of my most vivid memories is from the Bad Taste party she hosted in 2000 where the more alert revellers caught a glimpse of a fast moving creature dashing through the shrubbery.
In preparation for the big day yoga and fitness have been prioritised. There are plans afoot for adventure and travel. She is garnering all her resources to ensure that she does not just dwindle into pudgy, grumpy, frumpy obscurity. The words Emily Dickinson wrote to her friend Louise Norcross in 1872 seem appropriate on this auspicious occasion:
"...How short it takes to go, dear, but afterward to come so many weary years - and yet 'tis done as cool as a general trifle. Affection is like bread, unnoticed till we starve, and then we dream of it, and sing of it, and paint it, when every urchin in the street has more than he can eat. We turn not older with the years but newer every day."
So Happy Birthday for tomorrow! It's good to be with you on this stage of the journey.
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