Celebrations: Middles, Beginnings, Ends

Thirteen years ago today, Roy and I had a wedding and ate Nanaimo bars. It was a great wedding. The Nanaimo bars, too. We're happy. I enjoy celebrating our anniversary. 

Birthdays are an obvious time for celebration. Book birthdays, for example. It's fun to celebrate beginnings--the beginning of a life or a life together. 

Endings are harder to celebrate, exactly. If the thing ending was lovely and positive, it's hard to be happy to have had something when you're still mourning its loss. If the thing ending was not so lovely or positive, the temptation is to pause for a momentary "whew" and keep moving. 

At least in my experience. 

So how can we celebrate more things in the middle? Which is sort of what an anniversary is. Thirteen years, with thirteen-hundred more. Also a birthday celebration--you were born, see how far you've come!  

Another middle: it's the eleventy-millionth day of asking myself about this character in my novel, "What is Martin doing? Is his name even Martin?" So, yay?

August 26th is (according to some) National Dog Day. Also, since 1971, Women's Equality Day to celebrate the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting (White, sigh) women the right to vote. Women's equality is for sure a work in progress (equal pay, bodily autonomy, argh). 

Daily celebrations. Everyday (quotidian) celebrations. Things on gratitude lists. Celebrations of the middle, in the middle. 

Happy day-in-the-middle-of-the-thing, everyone. Have a Nanaimo bar.