Only the moon and the stars in the sky did know to cry for me as I sailed on...

We take life far too seriously. I'm sitting here paralyzed by the fact that twenty years of my life have gone and left me with a fistful of the most beautiful memories anyone could ask for. What would my life be like if I had not been nurtured the way I was? I used to spend so much time feeling sorry for myself and molding myself into a victim, trying to convince everyone else that I was some downtrodden soul. I'm HAPPY. I can't imagine being in a more perfect place in my life. Suddenly I see that I am blessed with an insurmountable supply of love. It's not hard to give away love when your heart is so full.

From time to time I remember tiny details of my childhood summers: jabbing holes in the metal lid of a baby food jar to make a home for the fireflies I caught in my Mawmaws yard, the way I always secretly loved getting caught in downpours because the way my skin smelled afterwards, the smell of the detangler I'd have to douse on my hair when I climbed out of the shallow end of the public pool and then feeling the droplets of water evaporate from my skin, the way the cool grass felt between my six year old toes. God, I was in a rush to grow up and things aren't so different in my older years.

I used to fear being alone, never falling in love, never getting married and having a family -- but, here's the thing... I'm in love with life, I'm never going to be alone (all I have to do is look around and there are people who care about me), getting married ISN'T for everyone, and I have a pretty amazing family already. It's as if, all of a sudden, I'm completely comfortable in this skin.

I'm sitting outside now on a perfect summer night, the stars are a bit muddled by the clouds that hint at the possibility of a summer rain. And there are clover blossoms poking their heads out of the grass that probably could stand to be cut. Yes, this lawn is a different one from the ones I spent playing freeze tag in. I'll tell you one thing, the grass still feels the same between my toes, the almost non-existant breeze still smells like honeysuckle, the leaves still turn their edges towards the sky as if to reach for the coming rains, and this girl's happiness has returned to the height it was when her Daddy took the training wheels off her bike, when that orange cat showed up on her family's doorstep looking for a home, when she made halos out of the clover stems, when she read her first chapter book, when she wrote her first poem, when her big sister picked her up from school on her birthday and let her play hookey while spending the day shopping, when she got her very first car, when she graduated from high school, when she came home from college for the first time, when she held the most beautiful baby girl in the world in her arms minutes after she came into the world. Yeah.... she's still that happy.