My birthday is September 11th

This year, I turned 40. And I really wanted a party, but after making that request to my husband, I realized that I felt a little selfish, and modified my request to be about creating a new tradition around that inauspicious date.. one that might be celebratory of being with good friends and loving family members, about being alive and furthering the cause of peace. Well, it didn't exactly turn out that way... everyone came and had a lovely time, which I was grateful for, but nothing much in the "larger picture" theme.

I decided to send everyone who came a thank-you card.. thanks for being here to celebrate, and for being a precious part of my journey to 40 (and beyond), and I enclosed a folded paper crane inside each one, with the idea of putting forth that intention of peace in the world. As I sat folding crane after crane, (decorated with beads, tiny Swarovski crystals, and little pendants that read "love" or "imagine") I was thinking what cool little gifts these could make, and perhaps I could make them to sell. Further along, I then began to imagine just making tons of them, like Sadako with her noble but unreached goal of folding 1,000 cranes before she succumbed to cancer... and placing them in random public places: the supermarket shelves, the ATM machine, Dunkin' Donuts, the gas pump, the video store. What if I enclosed one in every bill I mailed in, or in letters to my congressmen? What if I could get everyone I know to do this? Can you imagine hundreds upon thousands of paper cranes descending upon the White House?

Origami paper is pretty, but we could use any kind of paper...recycled junk mail, political smear ads that are coming by the hundreds in the mail, magazine articles covering the war in Iraq! What would be the reaction as more and more people starting seeing these delicate little birds everywhere they went?

It's just a folded piece of paper. It's silly to think that something so insignificant could have an impact on the huge and entrenched mindset of the necessity for war.

We'll just have to see, won't we...