When I arrived to take my nine year-old niece to school yesterday, she had a job for me. "Emerald died," Josie reported. "We have to bury him." 

Emerald was a beta fish. She told me that his once-splendid tail had fallen apart and that the other fish in the tank had been attacking him. She had already laid him out in an Altoids tin and had a grave marker ready (recycled from the burial of Saski, her very first fish).

Her dad tried to give me an out - he knew I'd had a full load of family, friend, and client funeral services in recent weeks. But Josie already had me by the arm and said conspiratorially, "After all, Aunt Holly, it's what you're good at."

We dug a shovel out of the garage. Josie was pleased we'd found the yellow handled one; they'd used a trowel for Saski's burial and she had yet another tool in mind for whichever burial would come next. The idea of every one of their garden implements being employed in gravedigging seemed important to her.

She led me to a spot underneath a rhododendron bush where Saski had returned to the earth. We dug the grave, trying not to bisect any earthworms. Josie picked up each of the worms that wriggled to escape, comparing their lengths. After placing Emerald's casket in the ground we gathered petals to decorate it. She told me stories about Emerald and told Emerald stories about Saski, so that they might find each other in the spirit world.

But there was something missing. The ancient Egyptians sent their dead along with something from their lives so they wouldn't feel lost, she told me. She ran off to get a few pieces of gravel from Emerald's tank.

After those were placed I asked if she had a song for Emerald. She gave it some thought and then began a soft song of love and farewell. I joined her for a few final rounds. We covered the grave, placed the marker and some flowers, and went inside for breakfast.

Since mid-May when I left my friend Marcy's bedside expecting her to die the next day, and got on a plane bound for my family's ancestral home in Italy, my life has been soaked in intensity: joy and sorrow, the simultaneous uplift and ache of conscious endings. 

The work for Freedom to Marry that I've done part-time for nearly 5 years: done. The women's music festival I've been a part of for nearly 20 years: I leave tomorrow for the 40th and final Michfest. Every day I steward a small piece of Marcy's legacy as I prepare for her public memorial celebration later this summer, as I help make arrangements for her gravemarker, as I tell her story - our story - to the bereavement chaplain and the friends who are good enough to want to hear about it as often as I need to speak about it.

In the midst of these endings, I've been privileged to mark other milestones, no less rich in meaning: the 12th birthday of my goddaughter Ava, and the 80th of my father-in-law, Dean.

For the first time since I was present for Ava's birth, I missed her birthday (I was in Italy). I'm not sure 12 is a big deal for her, but it was for me. On my 12th birthday (on December 12th) I got my period for the first time, and my parents got divorced. The self-inflicted risky behaviors that serve as a proxy for the coming-of-age rites we no longer observe in our dominant culture began, for me, way too early.

Beholding my innocent Ava and imagining her now, going through what I went through at that age, brings my heart into my throat. How to protect her childhood while acknowledging the threshold on which she stands? How to honor her innocence while preparing her for the wider world?

I proposed to her moms that they allow me to take her on a trip out of town, the first without them, outside the protective bubble of their mini-van. We took the train to Seattle and bumbled our way around town on public transportation. We did a bunch of fun kid stuff - the Space Needle, a Star Wars costume exhibit, making fantasy maps at the Experience Music Project. And we had a few brief forays into topics that belong to the world of adults.

One the other end of life's fragile cord, Amber's dad turned 80. The lead-up was fraught with emotion for my spouse, an only child, as she reviewed a lifetime of family photos and plotted how to celebrate her dad. We made a book of images from his life going back several generations (including the gravestones that he and Amber have been visiting in cemeteries from Camas, WA to Roseburg, OR); presented him with magazines from the week of his birth, one for each decade; and threw him a party at our home.

Life is full and rich and good.

"I'm feeling complicated," a Facebook friend posted recently. When it comes to my birthday, I know how she feels.

No matter how incredibly blessed I am in my life on so many levels, there are always some "It's my party, I can cry if I want to" moments when the calendar turns to 12/12. The echoes of the past pound loudly in my ears: my first birthday, spent in an isolation unit of an Army hospital in Germany; my 12th, the day of my parents' divorce; four years ago, the two trips to the ER with a ruptured disc in my neck.

This year the traumas of birthdays past were met by fears of the future. I had marked the entrance to my fifties two years ago with a ceremony in which I asked "for the courage and the grace to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of my own unfolding."

I am loving, for the most part, where the current is taking me. I just hate what it's doing to my skin.

In my mail box this last week arrived the latest issue of my college alumni magazine featuring a truly lovely profile of my current work, with an equally lovely full-page, nearly life-size photographic portrait - the first photo I've seen in which I look my age: neck wattled, eyelids droopy, skin coarse. (Believe me, the digital version glosses over what's revealed on the heavy matte page.)

I feel humiliated by my vanity; humbled by my unexpected age-phobia. I know how extremely fortunate I am to enjoy good health and vitality as so many around me suffer severe physical afflictions; to be in a loving partnership of 18 years while so many live lonely; to have such meaningful work in my life, and to be so recognized and appreciated for that work.

But "Facing the End" remains complicated. I may talk about it every day. But that doesn't mean I don't recoil to a deeply fearful place when I contemplate my mother's death, or Amber's, or Marcy's. Or look with confusion and aversion on the impact of time and gravity on my skin.

And so, on my birthday, I honored the complicated parts with some tears, in the sturdy embrace of my beloved. And I celebrated the many blessings of my life with a succession of sweet moments of connection, culminating with a raucous performance of an epic birthday play written, acted, and produced by Ava (11), Bennett (newly 8); Josie (7 for two more months), and Jules (nearly 3).

Later, as Amber and I sat by our fireplace for a wind-down round of Bananagrams, I realized the complications had washed away. I felt bathed in love and gratitude.

When my father died, my step-mother sent away for his veteran's flag. His three years in the Air Force hadn't been a primary theme in his life; he hadn't seen combat. But she thought I should have it. 

I displayed it, still folded in its tight, crisp triangle, when I created a memorial service for him six months after his death. And then it went into the basement. I'm afraid it didn't fare well there, between the soot from the old furnace chimney we demolished and the the misbehavior of our two cats. I felt ashamed of my neglect. While I never planned to fly the flag, I knew it deserved better.

What does one do with family keepsakes and heirlooms when one doesn't have children? If I'd had a son, I would have entrusted him with the care of the flag. 

I don't have a son. But I do have a godson. A seven year-old godson who has a mild fascination with "Army guys" and uniforms and the like. A godson who, having been adopted, sometimes has questions about where and whether he belongs.

I checked with his moms to make sure they'd feel okay about me passing on this potent symbol to Bennett. I took the musty flag to the drycleaners. When I picked it up, folded over the hanger, I was astonished by its size. Of course - big enough to drape over a casket. 

I enlisted the staff at Elmer's Flag & Banner - one of those Main Street establishments you pass by for years without ever venturing into - to fold it properly, and then I bought a protective plastic case.

I brought it to Bennett's house on Memorial Day, along with a jade jewelry set that my father had given my mother, which I planned to pass on to my goddaughter Ava. (Yes, I'm a little dismayed at the gender conformity displayed by my designation of these items, but then again, my spouse Amber is now in proud possession of my grandfather's pocket watch.)

We gathered around the dining room table, Bennett and Ava and I, joined by their moms, their two grandmothers, and their one living grandfather. I began by asking, "Do you two know what family heirlooms are?"

Though they nodded "no," when I defined the word they had no trouble telling me why family heirlooms are important. We talked about how they help us know where we came from. How those who come before us help create the world that brings us into being. How remembering them helps us know who we are and where we belong.

I pulled the flag out of a bag and asked Bennett if he would do me the honor of being the keeper of my dad's flag, of helping me to remember my dad, to keep him a member of our living family even though he'd gone on to the spirit world. I shared a photo of my dad in uniform and talked a little about his time in the service. Ben took the flag with what felt like awed reverence.

I gave Ava the jewelry set, featuring a jade pendant engraved with Chinese characters, explaining that I wanted her to have it both as a keepsake from my parent's marriage and as a nod to her Chinese heritage. We talked a bit more about the rich treasure chest of family stories sitting around the table, embodied in their grandparents, and how family heirlooms could unlock those treasures.

Lastly, for their joint stewardship I gave them one of the memorial stones created from some of my dad's ashes. When I'd first received them, fresh from the wood-fueled earth kiln in which they'd been fired, Ava and Ben had been fascinated and asked for one. "We'll see," I said at the time, explaining they were kind of like a tombstone, a special physical connection to someone no longer living, a way to remember.

Now, in front of their family shrine, I asked if they would still like to be the keepers of one of my dad's stones, if he could share space with their ancestors, if our ancestors could be together. 

They accepted the call, and placed my dad's photo and his stone alongside the other sacred objects on their ancestor's shrine. 

*          *          *

Happy Father's Day, Dad! For more on my journey with my father: The story of his memorial stones, how I found Forgiveness, the surprising end to his memorial ceremony,  marking the 10-year anniversary of his death, the belated eulogy I wrote for him, and the raspberries that always remind me.

There were other moments with my mother that marked my passage into adulthood - when she pulled the car away from the Reed College campus after depositing me and my belongings for my freshman year, for example (she swears I looked terrified; I recall nothing of the sort).

But the threshold-crossing that I remember best at this time of year is when she packed up my Christmas ornament collection and shipped it across the 3,000 miles that separated us. Her aunt Scooter had started the family ritual, bestowing a special Christmas ornament upon me and my sister. My mom adopted the practice, curating each year's offering from a museum gift shop, a local arts and crafts sale, or her travels.

Christmas was typically crappy at my house growing up, my father's comings and goings and poorly kept secrets adding reckless speed to the usual rollercoaster of heightened expectations and dashing disappointments. But the annual ornaments, unwrapped on Christmas Eve, never failed.

By the time I was fully established as a West Coast resident - my trips back east for the holidays no longer annual and that "home" (as defined by wherever my mom lived) shifting with my mom's career moves - my ornament collection had grown to several dozen. My mom sorted through the boxes, separating the twinned pairs - each of my ornaments matched by one of my sister's, thematically related but as distinct as she and I. My mother nestled each into the protective sleeve of a wine carton. Taped and addressed, some of the best of my childhood made its way across the continent to me.

Since I've been the custodian of my own collection, others have added to it. For a few years I held a tree trimming party but the truth is, I prefer to place the ornaments myself. The newest goes up first. I no longer wait til Christmas Eve to unwrap my mom's latest. She sends or delivers it earlier in the month, triggering my always-fervent announcement to Amber, "We need to get my tree!"

The bird wing of this eclectic menagerie is now the largest - I like to put them together up at the top. The oldest ornaments, all faded felt and unravelling gold thread, go on the more private back side of the tree revealed when I open the pocket door to my office. Writing this at my desk, there they are - talismans of my childhood. 

Other ornaments bring their own associations. The one from the Alaska State Ferry trip where my grandmother spent a week narrating her life's story into a tape recorder. The ones made by the kids in my life, to whom I will someday bequeath my collection.

This year I decorated the tree the way I like it best. My mom was in town for a visit. She and Amber and I ventured out to a neighborhood tree lot - too cold to cut our own, we decided (we are a practical clan). Amber took care of getting it in the stand and hanging the lights. And then my mom unpacked the battered old wine carton, releasing each treasure from its shroud of old wrapping paper and packing peanuts. She handed them one by one to me and I found them each a place on this year's tree.

As a kid, I was a bit of a brat. I protested mightily whenever my mother packed us up for a trip to our nearest relations for Easter or Thanksgiving dinner. It was a two-hour drive; I got carsick; I didn’t see the point. “Someday,” my mother predicted, “you’ll appreciate family traditions.”

She was right of course (and I’ve since given her the satisfaction of telling her so). I appreciate family traditions so much these days that I’m all about making more of both – more family, more traditions.

When I was 17 I took up the family imperative to emigrate. Like my mother’s parents who had moved from Italy to the US; like my father who had left the South as a teenager for New England and then left his marriage for Hawaii; I flew across the country for college in Oregon and never looked back. With my family of origin 3,000 miles away in either direction I had the good fortune to be adopted at the age of 22 by a pack of lesbians.

Friends since college, they’d migrated from Bowling Green, Ohio by way of Corvallis and now gathered several times a year for holidays. Thanksgiving in the Columbia River Gorge. Christmas Eve in town where the original gang poses on the couch for an annual portrait while they belt out the BGSU fight song. Fourth of July on the Nehalem River in the Oregon Coast Range.

Over the years this extended community has celebrated each other’s birthdays and anniversaries (35 years for the longest-standing couple), and mourned each other’s losses. And the family keeps expanding, with kids and new partners, new friends. 

I’ve come to inherit a tradition established by the host of our Fourth of July campout. Years ago she found the perfect Fairy Log in the wooded acres above the main camp. Covered in moss and surrounded by wildflowers, the log invites the imagination of the kids who trek to visit it. As they crest the hill, shafts of sunlight illuminating the log, they discover what mischief the fairies have been up to. A bottle cap from our kitchen, little bits of food, agates from the river below – it’s clear the fairies have been amongst us.

Being the keeper of the Fairy Log gives me an excuse for a quiet solo walk in the woods away from the boisterous camaraderie of the firepit and swimming hole. As I made my way to it this year, pockets full of secret fairy loot, I started out on the wrong trail. But I didn’t worry. I had faith that all paths would lead to the Fairy Log. Sure enough, after a few meanderings I saw those rays of sunlight like nature’s neon sign flashing on my destination. A little critter – a chipmunk or a squirrel – hopped off the log as I approached. Two orange butterflies danced around me. A snail inched its way across the trail. I almost expected Bambi and Thumper to show up.

And the next day the kids’ anticipation and the look on their faces as they came upon the log made me fall in love with tradition all over again.

A Fairy Song

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 

~ William Shakespeare

My coming of age story: The day I turned twelve, on December 12th, was the day my period first started, the judge signed my parents’ divorce decree, I got my ears pierced (one became infected), and a lumpy rash spread all over my body. My rites of passage were sex, drugs, and rock and roll. 

I’m amazed by the stupid risks I took and survived.

And so I was incredibly curious and impressed when a thoughtful friend organized a coming of age ceremony to honor her daughter's menarche, her entry into womanhood. I thought my friend was a pretty cool mom.

Recently I called her to have her remind me of the details of the event.

“The first thing you need to know,” she said, “is that my daughter hated it.”

Mother had invited a bunch of women she thought might be interesting role models for her daughter. She installed Daughter on a throne of sorts (an overstuffed chair), a blanket spread in front of her on the floor, a pile of sand on the blanket. Mother smoothed the sand into an even layer and then drew a spiral to represent the journey of life. She asked each guest to place a token of their own journey into womanhood on the spiral as we offered Daughter our stories.

I can still see Daughter's face: shy, forebearing. I realize now that she was mortified.

As word of this ceremony had spread among Mother’s friends, such was the hunger for a re-do of their own unremarked coming of age that women showed up who had never even met Daughter. Here was a group of near-strangers discussing anatomical details –worse, the changes, the very private changes, occurring in her own body – while she was forced to sit and listen and smile.

Daughter and Mother have discussed this awkward incident many times in the decade since. In fact, Daughter agreed to help Mother organize a coming of age ceremony for a young woman who had recently lost her mother to cancer – but she agreed only on two conditions.

First, invite only the closest circle of adult women who actually have a relationship with the young woman. This ensures the guest of honor – and not the ceremony itself – is the focus.

Second, avoid any mention of the anatomical details of puberty!

The ceremony – a redo for both Mother and Daughter, a circle of support and remembrance for a motherless adolescent – was, I am told, a huge success.