S's first birthday is just a month away and I have begun thinking more and more about what I'll do to commemorate it. If rituals only acquire their weight through repetition, there's an urgency to beginning early.

I was lying in bed the other morning when I thought of the motto "The Sky on Your Birthday" and imagined an album with, oh, twenty pages or so, to be filled over the years with snapshots of just that. The conceit risks preciousness and pretentiousness but I can't say I've shaken the appeal of those banal photos, page after page.

Simultaneously, of course, I contemplate altogether more wholesome traditions of birthday crowns and birthday books documenting each year in lovely detail. What did your parents do while you were growing up that holds a particular charm now? And what do you dream of doing, and what do you do with your own children?

This, at any rate, is the sky yesterday, on my birthday, where I had a perfect mix of markets and wanders and giggles with S and David, and a long lovely evening with an old friend quite unexpectedly in town from Bonn. More on all that soon.

Comments

[Katherine]

doh! I forgot, not remembering even Friday when I found your charming shout-out to me re: the recipe. Happy, happy belated, my dear, and may the year of days lead just as happily to the next.

[Jo Spittler]

Happy Birthday, dear Sylee - the sky does you justice.

The ideas for S's birthday are beautiful. To consider that the future will be the past and part of her life one day. To not get lost in the day-to-day hassle but to pick out the treasures and honour them.

All the best!

[Berlin Reified]

Katherine, Jo, thank you! & Jo, it can slip so easily into "everyday hassle" and you're very right that one cannot get lost in that.