Another Very Happy Birthday

I went to Pt Townsend for the weekend for my birthday. It was so gorgeously fall, bright and cold, a trip with a ferry ride the first night, the sleepover ferry, lets call it, because of all the kids in their pajamas trying to get the hot chocolate machine to work. It worked for me too, and I felt all of that good continuity I always feel during my best times in the PNW, like over the course of my life I might have a day on that ferry with every human I love. The twins will have pajamas with feet and grubby fingers on the window. The ferry ride back in the sunshine was just as good.

And then there was Fort Worden, which I love, partly because it lets me imagine that there is no military left, that it's just something we remember, like heroes. I love the big old buildings being used for knitting retreats and poetry presses, the officer's quarters being rented out to groups of families who will let their kids stay up late with sparkling cider to shout Happy New year in the snow on the big lawn where you can fly a kite on a windy day.

I walked until my camera batteries died, and then I kicked the leaves and listened to Wilco singing Say You Miss Me, and Son Volt's Windfall. I saw a green Schwinn with a basket and a little kid who made the helmet she was wearing look like a bucket somehow, opening and closing the gate to the tennis courts, tottering in that butt padding and working her little fingers like she had just figured out they were there. Someone's little white dog really wanted to meet me and I wondered which of the houses was the one where I got busted for making out with one of the ASB officers in 11th grade.

And then I went back to the little cabin and was overwhelmed with all your well-wishes, text messages and phone calls and emails. I don't know that there has been a day in my life when I felt more loved. I've said it before, but it's worth repeating. I am such a lucky girl.