Life is a beach...if you are lucky

I had a birthday this weekend. Those numbers are creeping up there and I'm surprised at how little it seems to relate to me. I traveled over the holiday with a friend I've known since we were twelve years old. We've seen each other at our most awkward, at our most beautiful, through the loss of loved ones, through triumph and failure, and all sorts of change. What hasn't changed is that we continue to build a shared story, one that is a near unending source of material for ribbing each other. I tease her about cats, shopping, and her ability to get injured in the most benign of places. I swear she could have an accident in a pillow store. She teases me about the stupid machine in casinos that pushes quarters toward a ledge in gravity defying dance of frustration, my irrational fear of bears, and my weakness for balding men. (I have a theory about extra brain cells crowding out hair follicles and I can't resist a brainy man, especially if he has a sense of humor and appreciates mine.)

Our birthdays are three weeks apart, hers first, then mine, so I get to go on about being younger every May and I do. I'll probably continue until we are ancient because now it's expected, it's tradition. I have no doubt that we will still be friends. Some years, we wait to celebrate our birthdays until we are together, as we did this year. Usually, I go for the smartass card or any that I find about cats. My friend has a wide array of things to tease me about, but this year, she chose sincerity. I've had a difficult year and I'm afraid it shows, like it does when I'm happy or angry or amused. I've never been good at poker.

I am grateful for my friends - all of them. Sometimes you just know instantly that you click and sometimes it creeps up, but I've been fortunate to know some extraordinary people and I am the better for it. I used to be much more cavalier about the people flowing in and out of my life. I was proud of my independence. I worked hard not to get too attached. I actually believed the crap in Cosmopolitan. God help the girls who hope to live life like Sex in the City. The truth is that human connection is all that we have. Even when it doesn't work out like we hope.

I spent the weekend chatting up fellow travelers of all backgrounds, temperaments, economic strata, and cultures and it was invigorating. It was sunny, the water was that exquisite range of turquoise to mallard blues, there were rummy frozen drinks, and food every two hours. I worked on my tan. I wore a bikini and was photographed in it without shame. I read three novels. Still, I caught myself thinking about how much a recent friend would enjoy it, how much fun his daughter would have, how exciting it would be to see a place so different from home, and how much I would have enjoyed being part of that. But I can't fall into the what-if game. And I can't go back, it seems, to my cavalier youth where there was comfort in the superficial. I've been reminded too often lately that every moment must be appreciated, savored, shared. I no longer have the luxury of ignorance or denial.

So, I will engage. I will meet and greet. Without looking for anything, I will chat up strangers again, make connections, make new friends, enrich an already bounteous circle and maybe someday, one of them will choose to follow me to white sands and aqua seas. And maybe I'll be okay with that.