Today is my sister's birthday.

I feel as if, for the first time in my life, I'm growing up. It's a strange sensation.

I've known for years that I was maturing, learning, advancing. It wasn't always at a steady pace, sometimes "breakneck" would be more apt a descriptor than "steady". But it was always happening, and I always knew it was happening.

But I could never feel it happening.

I can feel myself growing up. I can watch the years wash away from my frame and be replaced by wisdom and knowledge and cynicism and hope. Yes, hope. It's one of the things I am beginning to sense, seeping into my veins, into my heart, into my bones.

I am becoming older. I am becoming stronger. My youth is decaying, and in its place is what I believe the Korean's referred to when they speak of the Hwa Rang, the "Flowering of Manhood". It is as if all the sunshine and good soil and rainwater of my life up until now has temporarily abated, and I find myself maturing in the absence of an environment that demands my continued development.

Suddenly my circumstances do not require me to grow, and so I grow voluntarily, and I can feel every moment of it.

I read "The Five People you Meet in Heaven" this morning.

"Per l'amaro ed il dolce"--For the bitter and the sweet.

It as if, until now, my life was a river, and I advanced only because the rushing of my life pulled me ever forward. But now, my river has emptied into a bay, and I'm rowing out to sea, skimming among the larger waves and heading for the horizon. I do not progress because the current pulls me, but because I wish to advance, I wish to move farther forward.

What does all this mean? Is that what this last year was? My resistance, as I paddled upstream? Avoiding the mouth of the river? Avoiding the advance, realizing for a moment that I wanted no more of maturity, but just the innocence stupidity of youth?

But why now--having been spat out of the mouth of the river and left to drift in the bay--do I find myself preparing for a larger journey? Pushing forward now, just as the push from behind me has receded?

I am growing. I am flowering. I am the new bud. I am the craft slipping out to sea. I am the migration route. And the stories that my life will someday create seem to welcome me with a sad but consistent smile. "We always knew you would come. We have been waiting for you."

My life's ebb and flow is defined incrementally in each moment that I hesitate on the edge between thinking and being.

I will choose to be.