For My Sister, On Her Foutieth

February 24, 2016

You sister is your first friend, life long confidant, truest advocate, bearing everything with and for you. My sister and I always say that God sent us in together, knowing we needed one another. Her name, Anne, means Grace and she lives that beauty and shares it with everyone. Anne’s love is big and expressive, and I am so grateful my children grow up with a magical Aunt like her. As a former elementary teacher, and current religious education teacher, she understands children, and her truly limitless patience amazes me. She is forever protective of me, always knowing when to speak, when not to, and when to say, “Mary Kate”… and that is all she needs to say – I get it.

Anne is happiness, and love, and intensely generous with sharing that love with others. She is deeply compassionate, for everyone, everything, in her path. Witnessing her generosity with others is inspiring and deeply moving. She is someone who truly cares. It doesn’t matter who you are, if she knows you or not, that big heart of hers opens to everyone. There are no words to describe the gratitude that she is in my life, and the tremendous gift of sharing it with her.

Anne, on your 40th, wishing you every joy, and happiness, this day and always. Thank you for sharing and celebrating this life with me. You make everything better. You make everything beautiful. I cherish every memory and look forward to the ones to come. All my love, Mary Kate

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A repost for you, Anne! Thoughts on Turning 40

Maybe this is halftime. Maybe this is intermission. 40 years. I pray I have another 40 years to follow the first act. I have heard spiritual teachers say time is an illusion, to experience timelessness. But there are clocks and calendars, and to do list and birthdays. There are anniversaries and New Years. Timelessness yes, but Walden said, “as if you could kill time without injuring eternity”. Consider the lowly second, so easy to disregard with its lack of importance. “It will only take a second”. “I will be there in a second”. Maybe a second is everything. Maybe a second is the bronze medal or no medal, a car accident or avoiding disaster, just boarding the 11:07 train as the doors click behind you and you take a seat in aisle 24 next to your soul mate.

On the cusp of my 40th, I am considering time – gorgeous, expansive time and I don’t want to waste one sacred second. I want to celebrate every glorious one, not the one that preceded it, not the one to follow, that very second and get into the details of life. I don’t want to waste one act, one deed, one word. 40 years. Every experience in my life brought me to this. I thank God for every one of them. The beautiful and precious and silent ones and the heartbreaking ones. And sometimes especially the heartbreaking ones simply because these are the ones I don’t always understand, these are the ones that instruct me. These are the ones that cause me to rise, and rise, and then rise again.

40 years. And there is still is so much to learn, so much to do, so much to experience, and share and give. I hardly think I can get it all done. 40 years. I am not looking back; I am looking forward. I am not feeling old; I am feeling like I need to pick up the pace because time is a tickin. I am not lamenting the past; I honestly believe my 40s may be the best decade of my life. My yoga teacher says the meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give that gift to the world. The gift is love. And I want to give, and give and give for another 40 years. I want to give until I am completely spent, and there is nothing left. I want to leave absolutely nothing on the field.

40 years and magazines and commercials are telling me to erase time, to fight aging, to hide wrinkles and crows feet and believe me I understand. But once I heard the story of a woman, a cancer survivor who celebrated every silver hair, every wrinkle. To grow old is a privilege not everyone is lucky enough to experience. Not everyone sees their children grow. Not everyone has another day. Maybe we earn our wrinkles. Every laugh line is a memory and every worry line from all the love and care we pour over our children. Maybe faces are maps and to erase them is to erase us, our history. When I crave youth I look to my children. They are the young. I can let go of my youth with grace. I don’t need to erase anything.

Milestone birthdays are the pause button. The previous act just ended and the orchestra is warming up, getting ready to introduce the second act. The curtain draws and stage left enters a woman, brown hair, green eyes, easy smile. She is walking forward, looking towards something. It is her future. All the moments in her life brought her to this, to understand how precious time is. She doesn’t want to waste one second of it.

Through the years…