Coco at 32

Poor, sick with a cold and sore throat Courtney turns 32 tomorrow and it truly does seem impossible :) I would, if I could, whisk her back to an infant at times to see again those amazing expressions, witness her baby voiced discoveries and try even harder to slow time's passing. Would that I had blipped my loves, such a miracle that would be to look back on and to have captured each astonishing day. But there are Courtney-isms to remind me; I will always put up my 'neighborhood' when it's raining, for instance :) Rosie made Court a cake with candles to torture her with advancing years and wrote the name she coined for her, 'Coco' when she was but 2 years old and named herself, Roro. Happy birthday, my love. You have no idea the blessing you are!

A special friend sent this poem to me today and it seems apt to place it here

Youth Poem
Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind,
it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination,
a vigor of the emotions,
a predominance of courage over timidity,
of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years.
People grow old only by deserting their ideals.
Years wrinkle the skin,
but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair—
these are the long, long years that bow the head
and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether they are sixteen or seventy,
there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder,
the sweet amazement at the stars and starlike things and thoughts,
the undaunted challenge of events,
the unfailing childlike appetite for what is to come next,
and the joy and the game of life.

You are as young as your faith,
as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence,
as old as your fear, as young as your hope,
as old as your despair.

When the wires are all down and all the innermost core of your heart
is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism
then you are grown old indeed.

But so long as your heart receives messages
of beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur and power
from the earth, from man and from the Infinite,
so long you are young