Whoohoo! I went round the sun another whole year! Happy Birthday to me, and thank you to beavers for helping me age gracefully. Case in point, when I was briefly feeling a little wistful about getting sooo old. I got this email from Barbara of Marin who does the butterfly display at the festival. She was excited to attend and wanted to get a watching group together
GREAT OLD BROADS? There’s a wilderness group called great old broads? Where do I sign up?
So of course my question for Barbara immediately was just how old and how great does a woman need to join? Because I know just what I want for my birthday. The preview of Sarah’s film is in October and stars and conversation with Mary Obrien.
Of course I’m joining why even ask?
For the record I am turning 55 today, but honestly I don’t worry as much about it I might have. But once a million years ago with a formidable young patient asked “How old are you???” and in a bizarre effort to circumvent the conversation about boundaries and how old did she want me to be stupid stuff therapists do I answered “I was born in ’65”.
To which the child answered with complete unironic sincerity “Yeah but WHICH 65?”
To this DAY this still makes me laugh aloud. Because for that child I might as well have been born in 1765 because it was the same OLD as 200 years later. To children we are all the same age. Not young. And however much you fiddle with the margins it really doesn’t matter.
Plus I’m a Great Old Broad now so it’s really fine!
Also on friday I got this photo from Amy the chalk artist from Napa who scanned it from the new Women’s Day issue for October. Call it a delicious destiny.
Isn’t that adorable? I told Amy “Oh my god! What a incidence! It’s almost my birthday!” And she answered, “OMG what a coincidence, it IS my birthday!” Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
I always knew we were peas in a pod!
I also received the sweetest little hand painted card from my good friend and office partner Erika, who has helped us for years at the festival. Since she can’t get to the clay studio she is trying her hand at watercolors.
Pretty darn cute, am I right? I would say the cutest card ever but I just sat down at the computer to find Jon’s amazing three dee birthday card which is made out of a beaver chew. It’s a little hard to photograph since it’s three dimensional but it this should give you an idea.
If you’ve been around a while you’ll recognize the image as a beaver tattoo made for an art project by Coyote studios. Seems like it worked pretty splendidly on a wood surface which is worth remembering hmm…
As a last burst of beaver good news, I got a sent by finished movie to the woman who sold me the signed copy of the book you see in the opening images. The nice woman who helped me who runs an antique book shop in colorado and actually gave me another book just because she liked our story. As she had several signed copies and lives in the area I assumed she had some connection with the Mills family. This is her response this morning when I got up.
Ok, that was awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that with me. I’m not sure if his granddaughter and great granddaughter are still running his homestead museum or not, but I am sure they would love to see this. I am friends with Enos’ great niece and I will share It with her too. Her grandfather was Enos’s brother Joe – also a writer. And her father was Dorr Yeager a NPS Naturalist who was also an author. Pretty amazing legacy.
I actually got a little choked up when I shared this with my husband. I just love when things from my shop find the right homes.
Enos Mills grandchildren watching my movie! Is that the most amazing thing you ever heard? I knew it was destiny he came to Martinez. Stick with beavers. They will give you a great birthday every time!
