I want to talk about what an absolutely wonderful and memorable evening I had this weekend. It is a reminder of what is really important in this very strange life that we all share slices of, and I couldn’t be more grateful for what happened.

For some background, I need you to know that I have never truly felt excited about a birthday since maybe I was about 12 years old. I had an incredibly difficult upbringing when it came to celebration. My mother was a Jehovah’s Witness, my father was Catholic; obviously, this leads to a spiritual friction. The friction I received was trying to understand how to learn and work with both of these extremely divergent sects of the same christian religion.

My father wanted to celebrate birthdays. He absolutely loved Christmas, despite how he may have gone on about it. My mother on the other hand, felt uneasy with any kind of birthday celebration and while she really loved to give gifts and was a very thoughtful gift giver, and Christmas was the best time for that to happen, I think it destroyed her on the inside to celebrate Christmas because she felt it pulled her away from the religion she believed in.

So, here I am on my 44th birthday, yes today!! I am giving you a synopsis of what happened this last weekend and I promise you this will all make sense soon.

I leaned heavily into Erika to help organize people, I’m not very good at reaching out to people; it feels awkward to me to ask somebody to come over under the auspice of celebrating me, and don’t actually want to be celebrated and maybe there is some further deep trauma from childhood that I need to look into possibly… But at the moment I’m really ok with just allowing Erika to handle those parts and I actually think part of her enjoys getting in touch with, and in contacting and organizing.

STEAMFest was that morning, Saturday the 15th, and I took Thomas with me to do kind of a green screen/broadcasting to the Internet set-up booth. Something that let kids and adults alike see what goes on when a camera is shooting at a green screen and how that whole system works. I had a TV that showed the final output live. I had three cameras and a neat background and really good equipment that Jackson let me use at the school. It was a really lovely day. The weather was perfect and there were so many people at this event more than I’ve ever seen there in previous years maybe as much as 50% more this year!

After we finished, I sent Thomas off with his friend Bennett and I packed everything up and headed home, I was exhausted. I took a short nap and then I got ready to have people over to the house. Erika asked who I wanted to have over and while I couldn’t invite everybody I knew because of obligations and other things I did invite good friends and a couple of people outside of my normal circle, and it felt really good.

My very good old friends James and Mandy drove down from Birmingham. Colleagues who I respect deeply and would love to become better friends with overtime, Gene and Cheryl, also came. Sarah was there and Luke, and eventually, Jackie, and also Jennie and her husband Thomas came over. I propose the entire idea as a porch party because I don’t like celebrating my birthday. It was held the weekend before as a non-birthday.

It was a wonderful event. I enjoyed the time and company and conversations that we had a split time between multiple different conversation groups and I felt very loved that day. I really do feel like I have some incredibly thoughtful, cool, intriguing friends, and it was a delight to be able to spend all of that time with them and for them to spend time with each other, which was also a fun thing to see.

I had phrased it as a celebration of the 100th anniversary of our house in the moment of them all being there, but of course everybody knew why we were gathering and it’s because of my upbringing that I really just do not like it to be about my birthday and I don’t believe in what I was brought up with and how the Jehovah’s Witnesses handle birthdays I don’t agree with, however, I think years of dealing with that conflict have ruined my actual birthday for me. I have so many deep emotions and thoughts and conflicts and so many other things that destroy the day for me that even just moving it to a different day releases a lot of anxiety, and regret, and shame from my emotional palette.

Anyway, I had such a wonderful, beautiful time with them. We played records we talked on the front porch. We had drinks and snacks and after almost everybody else left James and Mandy stayed behind and we cooked dinner and got to have a delightful time with them also, my well was not empty on these days and I am forever grateful for those relationships that I formed and kept up and at genuinely want to know and understand more about those individuals they’re all so incredibly original, each one of them have unique properties that make them so special, and while I would love to apply that to all of humanity, and it certainly should, these are the people that I’ve connected with and these are the people who share some of the same values I do but they do it in such a cool and interesting way… I am fulfilled with the warmth of their friendship.

I know it all sounds cheesy, and I mean, I kind of think it does too, but I genuinely do believe it, and I am so fortunate to have these type of people, friends, people who care, in my life who helped me appreciate why our microbiology formed us into who we are in the womb and then allowed us to meet in the same timeline! I think that is one of the ultimate highs in life, so I think them for making the effort to be at my silly little porch party. It was a special evening, one I will not forget for a very long time if ever.