A few years ago, I was sitting in the kitchen eating lunch with the girls when I looked up and saw the neighbors' large, old oak tree fall over. It was not a stormy or windy day, and the tree looked healthy with a full crown of leaves. Yet it simply collapsed, like an antebellum belle in full swoon, the rustle of leave hitting the house replacing the whisper of skirts and crinoline.

I'm not sure where I am going with this, but I was thinking of that tree fall tonight on my walk. Thinking of how something can go from appearing sturdy to becoming frail in the blink of a firefly.

While waiting to pick up the girls from their community theatre play rehearsal tonight, I was talking with another member of the group. Gloria is in her eighties, and physically, she is becoming much more frail than sturdy. Yet she adores the theatre and is an active member of the guild, acting in many productions. I was knitting a sock while waiting for the girls and she started talking about how she took up knitting when her children were younger, knitting soakers for them. Funny how life twists, as, after a couple decades of throw away diaper use in our society, I had used soakers for my children, and my neighbor recently knit some adorable ones for her baby-to-be. Gloria went on to talk about crochet and how she tried to teach herself that "oh, in the sixties sometime." I loved the offhanded way she referred to it. As a lifetime spans decades, individual years matter less.

I have been noticing that as I work my way through my fourth decade. A firefly flashes, another day passes, a year flits by. A little boy gets his drivers license, a toddler becomes a young woman, a newborn learns to walk and talk. I age, crystallizing into the woman I am, growing comfortable in my skin.

This thing called life is an interesting journey.

Unbeing dead isn't being alive. ~e.e. cummings