Happy Birthday to Me

I turned 36 Friday.  While it was a birthday I'd previously given little thought (and had thought would melt into the background of the drama of the week), I realized today it will stand out for years to come:

• Just two days before I'd had the second D&C of my life - the second D&C of the year - to remove yet another baby whose heart just wasn't strong enough.  The thirty-sixth year of my life had more hard loss than the rest of my life combined.  
• The night before, Jeremy and I ventured out into snowy wonderland that had become North Texas in order to have a divine three-course meal in a cozy, authentic local French restaurant.  The setting made us eager to recount favorite meals and memories from our four years of global travels and helped remind me that I've had some pretty amazing experiences in life, despite the current personal recession we seem to be in.  We left feeling full, warm, fortunate, thankful and in awe of the white-washed landscape around us that the dearth of traffic allowed us to enjoy slowly, leisurely, safely.
• The morning of, we awoke to a foot of snow on the ground.  I'm still such a novice at snow that it makes me giddy.  But our enjoyment of it was incomplete without Gideon, so we made quick arrangements to meet my parents and retrieve him over a shared birthday lunch at the Hillsboro Black-Eyed Pea.  Only after he was home did we venture out into the deep, wet snow, thoroughly enjoying making snowmen, throwing snowballs, leaving footprints in the unbelievably thick cover of snow.  
• The cupcakes I ventured out to purchase from a snooty specialty bakery were dry and unimpressive - and really more of a formality to appease the three-year-old birthday aficionado in the house who only understands the word "birthday" when it's followed by "party" and involves a form of "cake" and the blowing of candles - and will quickly be forgotten, but the homemade snow ice cream - a blend of snow, milk, sweetened condensed milk, and vanilla - will be remembered for years to come.  

It's not what I thought it would be - and certainly not what I wanted.  But as with many things in this life that we cannot always plan, control or bend to our will, it came with its own pleasant surprises (along with the jarringly unpleasant ones) and it's one I tried to embrace as fully and completely and happily as my wounded heart would let me.  It was a birthday I'll never forget, even if there are moments in the future when I might wish I could.