In four years since I have planted peonies, this is the first time two of them opened on the day of my birthday. Everything feels a little rushed this year, a little too soon, but also right on some sentimental schedule that makes the events of the middle of my life and a continent away fall in rhythm of the early summers of my childhood. I always loved having a birthday in the beginning of the summer: the long days, the whisks of poplar pollen floating in the air, the peonies and the first strawberries, the feeling of endlessness, of all the things that lay ahead: picnics, seaside vacations, summer reading, evenings on the terrace. I am glad I have not lost it. I am glad that four people who wrote to me for my birthday are the ones who knew me forever, who knew the younger versions of me. I am glad that something incredibly deep, child-like, wondrous remains between us.

People ask me what I did for my birthday. I say that I went to watch the bull-frogs and played on the swings with my kids. The ones who understand this are kin.