Four decades

My fourth decade ended at midnight in the dark, appropriately, at the center of a circle of unbroken and unceasing love and kindness. My blood slow dancing and hiccups clumsily erupting in the aftermath of an $8 bottle of prosecco, and my baby, now so grown, hugging my shoulders heavily, her surrogate siblings looking on and asking for the 100th time why we don't just sleep over. Such a terribly* peaceful haze of love and acceptance it nearly suffocated me.

In the waning orange rays of a June sunset, the clouds seemed so full and light and radiant. They swelled as the air cooled, and burst, the vapor transforming into tiny droplets, then larger ones, too heavy to be suspended in the atmosphere above us. Brave tears filling up lower lids, a quivering lip, a tipping point. Clouds engorged, filled to critical mass with ether and wishes and prayers and purgatorial ghosts and red balloons and angels and demons and fairy dust and ultraviolet and magenta and gold. Spasms of lightning and unrestrained growls of thunder woke me like a fevery child, demanding I hear its cries. Then, all at once, the fever broke. Lulled back to slumber by the whisper of breaths nearby. My heart surrounded by a pillow of peace, shielded from the ticking of clocks and the light of the day that marks my 5th decade.