Birthdays in a family of nine kids, two parents and four spouses come frequently. When the kids were small most parties included a treasure hunt, and a magic show. We did manage to clump them for convenience. Six in the stretch from Christmas to Valentine's Day. Another five between mid July and Labor Day. Two outliers are in late May. That leaves shopping free zones in the spring and fall. 

 

Still there is a personal anniversary in the absence of cakes that holds meaning for me. Marriage moats were born in March of 2010. Every day since then stories have silently slipped out of the gate that is my keyboard, and into the inboxes and news feeds of a couple of hundred people who find them interesting. Moats have not blinked for vacations, snowstorms, memorial services, tantrums, or lethargy. On the contrary, those ebbs and flows are fodder for more reflections on the ribbon of life. 

 

Pitfalls, and their sidekick irritations, arrive with the regularity of a drumbeat. But that is not an indication that we are failing any more than the inescapable weather means that Earth has forgotten how to behave. The converse of having difficulties, which is suspended above our heads like an evening star, is not as bright as it seems. No drama? No uncertainty? No pain? Although I would deny it fiercely in a moment of childbirth, or standing by a feverish child, suffering is not a detour. It is the path. 

 

Mind you I am currently not bleeding, or grieving the loss of my mother, so I am foolishly free to ruminate on the value of strife. Yet one of the things that transpires when I dig deeper in the confounding wake of a medical crisis, or a barbed interaction, is that I find a thread of meaning. 

 

Almost like a treasure at the end of a string of clues.