Birthdays

Birthdays.  From one year to the next, a chance to reflect on what is now, what has been and what may be.  Arriving in an anticiapated moment that has existed since the beginning.  Sometimes we are getting older and sometimes we have found new youth.  Sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, busy, or bored, well, or wanting.  All these ways and many more have existed on this day for me.

This year I am far from my hometown as I have been in many years of recent past, though never so far.  My family and old friends are miles and hours away: to them I'm still a year younger for a few hours longer.  But this year I am surrounded but such incredible luck and fortune.  I woke up this morning, a bed away from a good friend, and just before breakfast a knock on the door brought two more friends and a chorus of Happy Birthday.  We ate a huge Japanese breakfast and were driven through the upside down white horizonless world of Niseko to a place where we suited up and went snow-shoeing on a gusty plain to dig two meters in the snow for potatoes, a traditional way of storing them in Hokkaido.  We returned to the house and our hosts taught us to make potato mochi.  A delicious sandwich and a concert in a beautiful venue, followed by a superlative nabe dinner of seafood, tofu and vegetables simmered on the table in a special cream sauce.  The remainder of the sauce was mixed with rice to make a Japanese version of risotto.  Another chamber music concert in the hotel for a very warm audience, surprise sake and a super surprise birthday cake presented by my friends and Natsuko and her husband.

Some birthdays are like this.  Well, actually no, I can't remember any that were anything like this so far in this lifetime, but I suppose that's the reason for this year.  Another way of having a birthday.  I feel very fortunate to have shared it with wonderful people, enjoying music and good food and warm company together in a beautiful place of new experiences.