Culebra Free Range Anniversary/Birthday Friday!

Happy Culebra Anniversary to me!

I never lived any place, in the same spot - i.e. the tiny shack on this tiny island - for ten years. Not in my whole life. And considering I"m not 15 (though that might surprise a few), that's a lot of years on the move to get to this moment in time. For me, that's a lot of sameness, something that once drove me a little mad, impelled me to jump on planes and trains and boats and roads and even with this love of place, that old winged thing inside of me can still drive me a little itchy footed.

For the most part, for the best part, I'm content, in this season of my life, to say, hey, I've lived someplace ten years in a row and not break out in hives. Ok, time to check the airfares to out there. It's that time of year. That's all.

The other thing I've never done is to have a daughter named Sarah be 36. Though last night she told me she didn't understand how she was 58 and I was 36. These things happen, I said. And sometimes they do.

 

(photo credit: Meredith Farkas)

Right now, Sarah is in her happiest of happy places in her life and in her job ("They pay me to do this!" happy giggle). She is working with excellent food in creative ways with passionate as she about food co-workers. For her birthday, I sent her a book about cheese. Cheese, it declares, scientifically can make you lose weight. Cheese, it states to our further delight, really does hit brain receptors that make you happy. We knew this. Well, not the weight part and that is certainly only true in balance, as is everything. While she isn't still growing on the outside, life is growing on the inside, pushing out the boundaries, spilling over the walls, blooming in the light. Hooray!

I've posted this before, but I love this photo.. These people had taste it notices up...so we did

I've posted this before too. It seems right for a birthday poem of love, from you to me and back to you, Bear. I'm so glad you were born and living in the entire world!

Getting it right is hard
Understanding family and loving them is
A task
Eating your mother's bread is a different communion
It is your life
Crisp crust or soft
Seeds or fruit
Rye or white
It is her hands
The hands that prized you or
Hated you
Everything you don't know about her
The bread the hands the aching
If you know her you don't
If you don't she is there
Bread is life she is life
You go back to the womb with
Every sandwich every smell
Driving the highway you
Know the fragrance when you pass it
The comfort
The warm intimacy
Of rising dough of yeast
We gather at hearths
We rejoice in the bakery
Because it is home it is life
It is your long lost love
It is your beginning
Fire and blood and yielding
To transformation
I eat the bread my mother made
And I am whole and
Attached to the entire world

Sarah Rebekah Shipley                  

Birthday oysters! For some, ugh. For us, this is love on a plate.
Wish I was there to steal a few from the birthday girl.

Have a free yourself Friday! Do something fantastically fuzzabumble.