On Birthdays, Bright Sides, and Dog Shit

Yesterday was my birthday. It was a good day; I received many cards and wishes encouraging me forward into new beginnings, new starts, promises of days to come. I smiled. I agreed. I hoped. When it came time to blow the candles out, I forgot to make a wish. It's probably better that way.

The things I would have wished for, for me, for you, for us. Huh. What an extraordinary year it was, so much learning, living, loving, grieving, giving things up, giving things in, reaching for the bar, another start, falling flat on my face. One thing that hasn't come very clear as I've made my sporadic postings in this blog is how important I think it is to find the funny in every moment of the hell and the folly because, really, all of this shit can be very, very funny, and if you choose not to laugh, it's just all despair all the time.

For instance: a few weeks ago some most excellent pals of mine lent me their super-licious yellow lab to keep me company while my sweet boy was gone away for too, too long on a business trip. One Sunday morning, I took the old fellow out for a walk around the block so he could complete his morning tasks. Of course, the showoff preferred a performance. He decided to leave his remains in the yard of a home with a toddler, while the youngster watched us through the screen door, greeting us happily, good morning! His dad scooted over, I waved sheepishly and said, oh, hey, sorry about all this.

Don't worry he said; I bent down and picked up my grandstanding dog's leftovers on the lawn. Case closed, right? No big deal. Wrong.

I had the dog shit in my right hand, holding it in the enviro-friendly blue bag. The next step was to simply turn the bag inside out, so as to tie it up neatly and carry it away. Easy-peasy. Except the goddamn bag had holes on both sides. Out came the shit, ricocheted off of my pajama leg and went splat right back onto the sidewalk. And there I was, with two choices. 1. Decide that I was about to enjoy more or less the worst and most humiliating day of my life or 2. Figure that once you've had a pile of dog shit ricochet off of your leg and splat down irretrievably on the sidewalk, in front of an audience, it really can't get much worse. I did my best with option two. I made a half-hearted attempt to clean up the mess, actually waved again at the happy family behind the screen door, and tarried along on my way. What the fuck.

There's so much dog shit out there ricocheting off of us all the time. We try to clean up the way we talk about it so that maybe we can somehow talk ourselves out of admitting that it really is as bad as we fear it might be. If you read what I just wrote, you can see what I mean. At first I talked around my problem, the dog had tasks, remains, leftovers. But this is baloney. The dog needed to dump. And the worst part about caring for animals is that we get to clean it up.

We get to clean up the shit. So much shit.

Back to my birthday. Well wishes galore. People imploring my future to smile more brightly on me than have the past few years. I wanted to drop to my knees and insist it to be true. I don't know if it will be. I think it might be. I hope and I pray.

Minimally, I know this: even as I'm not sure about so much of what I believe, there are a few things that I cling to quite tightly, things that pull me through when I start to drown. I believe in hope. I believe in goodness. I believe that most people mean well. I believe in second chances, and maybe even thirds and fourths. I believe in saying I'm sorry and meaning it with all my heart. I believe in mountain hikes. I believe in drinking from streams. I believe in reading books. I believe in poetry. I believe in music.

And I believe the hummingbird at my window just might be the best sight I see all day, until my sweet love comes home from work and walks right through our door.

I believe all of these things, and for right now these things are enough to keep me moving forward through all of the shit I still must find a way to either clean up or else gracefully learn to endure.