My Birthday was last Wednesday and I wanted to celebrate in grand style. This birthday was special because my brother and his wife were spending it with me and they don’t come very often from Australia. I chose this Moroccan Restaurant because I had gone there before and thought it would be a suitable venue for my special day. The images in this collages were taken there.
There were eight of us altogether and we had a good time . At a certain stage of life, you have to celebrate your birthday the way you want to. You have to plan the party. If you want a simple party, you have that. If you want something more fancy, you have that. This occasion was not any ordinary one for me. This had to be imbued with meaning for me, layer by layer.
There’s a learning in life that takes place for everyone and it isn’t always about the same things. I have learnt that when we celebrate life and all of life’s happy important happenings and events in a big way, there aren’t as many tears when sad time comes. So it was, that I wondered, how many other birthday opportunities would arise for us to celebrate as a family together. Why wait to find out? The time to go all out with the celebration of my own life and of those closest to me was now.
This celebration was a time to share a few things from my heart which I did. It was about requests made and promises kept. It was about staying together as family. It was also about extravagance and I will share a small portion of what I said on Wednesday night: “Tonight’s celebration is about extravagance. I’m not talking about the venue or the amount of money we will spend having dinner. I’m talking about extravagant love. I’m talking about meaning. Life, I believe, is in the living. It’s about sharing the best that you can with the people who mean the most to you when you can. It’s about telling those who mean a lot to you that they really matter. It’s in the attitude we bring to these special times. This is the true essence of sharing. I want my legacy to be about “extravagance” and taking time and caring. I hope we enjoy the time with each other extravagantly and share our love extravagantly with each other tonight.”
My father had written many stories for us and I shared a very important story of the legacy that my parents left us that night. As it has been said: “The real family legacy is the stories, not the sterling.” (Andrea Gross) This was the theme for all I said that evening of my birthday and I ended by giving a copy of what I had written to my son and my brothers. As time passes, our birthdays are times for extravagance and a time to express the meaning of our own lives while we are here. “Where there is no extravagance there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding.” Wilde, Oscar
Hope you enjoy the collages!