Today is my 51st birthday, and I am celebrating by taking care of my poor son, who is home from school with some kind of horrible virus that has attacked his entire soccer team. Every once in a while he lifts his head from the couch pillow and weakly promises, "I'll get up and make some birthday cookies for you a little bit later in the day," which is very sweet and very pathetic and makes me sigh and pat his forehead.

So far my birthday weather is overcast and cool, but the woodstove is burning briskly. The flowers that Tom brought home yesterday cast cheerful shadows on the kitchen table. I've unwrapped my parents' gifts: a history of Maine's native tribes and a Robert Pinsky poetry collection and a kitchen timer and a purple sweater.

Today I plan to finish reading Robertson Davies's World of Wonders and make headway on Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard.  I will copy out a few more Jane Kenyon poems, and I will work on my own poem draft, currently titled "Eight-Track-Tape Player." I will make cups of tea for my son. I will hang laundry on the porch lines and clean out a few garden beds. I will give the dog a bath and wander into the woods, hunting for the first signs of honey mushrooms and the last signs of chanterelles. I will cogitate about next summer's Frost Place plans. I will talk to my sister and my parents and my in-laws on the phone. I will drive to band practice and on the way home listen to a few innings of the Cubs-Pirates game.

Turning 51 feels fine. I like being alive.