After a night of limited sleep, I woke up on a four-foot long hospital couch and greeted my 70th birthday. I wore the longest inverted crescent moon frown I can recall since my childhood days when my mom said you could land an airplane on my pout, my lower lip jutted out far beyond its upper partner.

And, thus, I began my 70th birthday in the foulest mood I can recall.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve awoken to some awful mornings. The one where I could feel the tears weeping from my eyes before they were even open. “That’s not fair,” I heard 29-year-old me say. I hadn’t even had the chance to find my courage and wasn’t simply sad—I was sadness itself.

And those days in my childhood when I woke up scared and anxious, the nightmare of being chased by a giant through a city of tall dystopian buildings still permeating my body. I never put together that the giant of my dreams was the tall daytime older brother of my reality. That awareness came later, in adulthood, after years of therapy.

This morning in the hospital on my 70th birthday was different. I wasn’t angry and if I was sad, the sad hadn’t reached my consciousness. I woke up hard. I smacked a smile on my face and forced my voice into a strained lightness to greet my husband in the hospital bed recovering from surgery.

I knew I had to get out of that room and away from the hospital to reset myself. I didn’t want to be inadvertently aggressive with my husband nor did I want my 70th birthday wrecked by my mood. It was enough I had slept in the hospital because four days earlier, emergency surgery saved him from death, which would have claimed him within two hours had we not called an ambulance that rushed him to the hospital. I didn’t want to be swallowed up with a poor me morning because instead of St. Helena for two nights, I was in this hospital; instead of traveling to Europe and hopping on a cruise like a friend of mine, my 70th birthday was not a vacation celebration.

I fled towards home where I let the hot water of a shower wash away pissy me and stepped out to towel off any remnants of frown left on my body. I drank coffee, ate a hard-boiled egg and toast, and within an hour was in my car on my way to the hospital dressed in my new attitude of gratitude because it was my 70th birthday and I woke up in the hospital next to my husband, still alive.

The greatest gift I’ve ever received.