The Age of Aquarius: Happy Birthday to Me!

Hi Meltingpot Readers,

Today is my birthday! And surprise, surprise I treated myself to lunch in Center City, Philadelphia and an afternoon trolling around different bookstores. It was a truly pleasant day. (stay tuned for Thursdays’ post to hear about the book I bought). But I have to be honest. Just last week, I was kind of dreading my birthday. And I’ll tell you why. I’ve always hated my February birthday. As a kid, because I was a competitive swimmer, a February birthday meant I always aged out of the age-category I was about to master, right before Junior Olympics try-outs. And as an adult with kids, my February birthday always seemed to coincide with someone having the flu or a blizzard dumping buckets of snow and effectively destroying any party plans. For a while there, I was telling people I was going to officially change my birthday to April because I was sick of being sick and cold on my special day.

But then, dear readers, thanks to Facebook, I had an epiphany. Yes, I’m thanking Facebook for helping me see the light here. I started seeing names of famous people popping up whose birthday were very close to mine. And when I say famous, I don’t mean like Jennifer Aniston (although her birthday is the day after mine), I mean like Alice Walker (February 9), and Bob Marley (February 6). I started to feel pretty darn excited that I was in the company of so many creative folks. Then I started to think that my February birthday wasn’t some kind of curse or cold-weather burden, it was a blessing. I was born under the Aquarius sign and while I’ve always known that astrologers say Aquarians are creative, for some reason, seeing all of the poets, writers, musicians and actors who were born around the same time as me on Facebook – like Marian Anderson, Judy Blume, Charles Dickens, Langston Hughes and Nina Simone – it all clicked.

For the first time I feel like I was born at the right time and for the right reasons. So, for this new year of my life, I’m going to embrace the creativity that is my birthright and get to work on this book I’m supposed to be writing, but also, I’m going to play with my hair, and get creative with my clothes and maybe even get back to writing poetry.It’s time to let the creative me be free.

Happy birthday to me and all of my other February followers. Do I have any other Aquarians reading here? Speak up and let me know what makes you an Aquarius. I’m totally listening.

Peace!