joyeux anniversaire, cher

hello! (she says sweetly, quietly, not wishing to disturb what looks to be peaceful sleep and sweet, sweet dreams.)

what holds your mind's eye as one year ends and another one begins?

i am here, right where you left me ... stringing words together, like christmas lights, watching them shine brightly in the dark and listening to you breathe.

happy birthday to you ... the boy who says impossible things that i believe. what do you wish for? what can i give you that you don't already have? off-the-cuff compliments? adjectives? a conversation on paper? an impossible encounter that lives in the imagination and somehow becomes reality?

what will you give yourself?

the wisest of men know that real birthdays are not annual affairs ... they are the days when we experience a rebirth; so that while we may grow older in years, we are newer every day. this, i know, is not news to you. you already know this life is a constant, gradual process ... a subtle play of light and texture and shadows, measured in centuries and inches. it is about kindness and passion and potential and temperance ... extremes of temperature, folding, pounding, turning ourselves inside-out, and bringing out the gold hidden within.

my wish for you is that you'll fly free and happy ... beyond birthdays and across forever ... and that throughout our long lives, you and i will meet ... when we wish... in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.

happy birthday, darling boy. i hope you spend the day in the company of the people you love and who love you the most. and i hope the day gently breezes into your life carrying with it all the choicest of things and all that your heart holds dear.

i am ever so glad you were born.

a kiss ... and another ...

...la