And so, my love, it is your birthday, not that we began your celebrations that day. We often started on the first of April, sometimes before a daffodil was spotted, but not before the shelves of stores carried Easter eggs and stuffed bunnies.

I will celebrate you in the woods this day. It rained this morning, shades of our walks in the Highlands of Scotland. If I am lucky, in the darkness of the night, there will be thunder and then lightning. You loved a good storm.

This morning a group of people who share this journey on the middle path will gather on a graveled drive and set out into the woods, led by a soul who shares stories of those whose wisdom has stood the test of centuries. Stories told beneath the canopy of green with the goal, like a mother gently waking her child with a kiss on the forehead, to wake and experience the nowness of life, to see life through a child's eyes, fresh, with each breath making us one with the trees we sit beside.

So with my fellow travelers sitting in a circle, grateful for this glimpse of now, I celebrate your birth, the times we spent together, and the memories that hold me close now that you have traveled on.