My husband and I both have a birthday this month. 45. Truly middle age. I think I may live to 90. I can just see myself. I can see him too, at 90, thinking, where did all the time go??...it slips through our fingers and trails behind us and waits until we realize it passed. We are usually busily not paying attention, and then, are startled to realize time has moved on.

I think about my past. I think about how, as a child and a teenager life was lived for the day. Thoughts of the future were hopeful and goal oriented and wishful. I think about as I grew older my days started to linger on the past, thinking and reliving moments in my mind. Sometimes, I wishfully want them back. People. Places. Moments. Sometimes, I just want the wanting back. I want the shear excited WANT and HOPE back. I want the thoughts back that had me always in control.

As time goes on, I feel much less in control of everything. Now, there is work I have to do, and kids I have to tend to and bills to pay and clothes to launder. There are many moments of contentment and happiness but a bit less of hopeful wonder and more of nervous wonder. My past, and it's incidents loom over my life, like dripping laundry that will not dry. None of it really matters, yet, it all matters. Tiredness and weariness are presenting themselves like unwanted party guests. Attitude and Point of view seem to be more important than wishing on a star or a penny throw. Yet, what is wishing on a star but a point of view and a conscious attitude.

As I used to love a change in routine, now, it is hard to change my routine. It used to be a fun thing to do, now it is a necessary thing to do only harder to accomplish.

Decisions are much harder now, probably because they matter more.

Writer's...we think too deeply and feel too keenly. If we could only stop.

Sometimes, we just know the right thing to do.

One of my very good friends had a chance to join her brother and a celebrity of sorts in Paris this long holiday weekend. She chose to take her son here to the beach. She preferred this to that. Her son will have these days in his memory and his life will build and go in directions only God knows about but we know what he will think about when he is older and thinking about when he was a kid with his best friend and his mom at the beach and the fun and games and food and the very loud fireworks. Maybe, he will cry, like I do, for his free childhood easy days. Maybe he will be glad. Maybe he will be in the middle of choosing an appropriate past for his son or daughter.

Again, I realize my thoughts are really gratitude that I had those very thoughtful days, and parents that made my past exactly what it has become. I am glad to have my kids have fun filled, happy childhood days. I want it to continue and I try to make it easy.

Middle age is not easy. If we can only just live today and not worry so much. Control may not be a very good thing afterall. Maybe, we never really had any control. Things will happen as they are meant to happen...we just need to adjust our attitudes and point of view and look for those stars to whisper our secret wishes to or those candles to blow out with messages sent to the appropriate places and just keep going because everyday holds a few moments of pure pleasure and fun and love. And at any age, that is all that matters.

Today, is my son's birthday. He is 16. Independence Day. Hmmm???

Usually, on this date, after the cooking and the eating and when the sun goes down, we sit on a dark beach, with cold sand at our feet, unable to see a face more than one person away as the bright lights and loud pops of the fireworks loom above our heads. Today, it started to rain. We ran home. The fireworks were postponed.

Suddenly, pop, pop, pop and bright lights throughout the street. Smokey clouds flittered away in the sky toward the next small town.

The dog, shaking, hid in the bathroom.

I took a minute to walk to the corner. Pretty colored bomb like sparkles sped threw the air. I watched the people on the corners and the stoops and the parking lots with their heads tilted up, immobile.

I thought about one of my favorite beach front homes. It's porch is spacious and makes me think of Georgia and peach pie. The HUGE flag in the front yard wildly ribbons through the shore wind as graceful as a prima ballerina's perfect grand jete.

I think about this freedom we are celebrating. Again, able to do most anything we please to celebrate or bring attention to this day. Most of us were smiling. Most of us were tilting our heads and allowing those loud pops to remind us of a celebration, a reason to join together and be grateful no matter what our opinion is at the very moment we are sighing and oohing and aahhing. We are collectively together flying our flags proudly and glad to have the freedom to barbacue, sun bath, and shoot fire bombs into the air in recognition of our true good fortune.

Independent, we are, and like my new 16 year old, that hard won freedom only comes with strength and respect and trust. It is only maintained with strength, and respect and trust.

I am glad for it and wish it continues knowing just how hard that will be to do.

An intelligent writer who has the envied ability to create and portray and tell with expertise.

He makes me want to bury all my pencils and give up.

I also read his book "The Hours"...which was also terrific, and made into a very good movie.

This book is a bit science fiction but not too far fetched for me.
Walt Whitman haunts the characters in this book, hence, the quotes.

Another science fiction book I read and loved (not Cunningham's), although some of my friends disagreed, was "The Time Traveler's Wife"...I loved it.

"Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from".

"It avails not, neither time or place...I am with you, and know how it is."