Happy birthday, Matt!

Tomorrow is your birthday, and this is one of two times a year I explicitly write about you here.  I thought about various ways to tackle this birthday, this letter, coming as it does on the heels of the most eventful year in our lives.  Two new jobs.  Two new schools.  Two fathers gone.  It’s hard to really think about the world on your birthday last year and your birthday this year; so much is different.  But of course so much is the same, as well.

I feel a little daunted by trying to capture in words all I want to say this year on your birthday, and a little overwhelmed given everything that’s happened.  Truthfully, I feel a little blocked, and mostly I just want to say thank you.  So here we go, freestyle, inspired, as I often am, by Gail Godwin’s words: “the more you respect and focus on the singular and the strange, the more you become aware of the universal and infinite.”

Let me count the ways I love you.

I love the way you are handy and can take care of a lot of things – the stove in Cambridge and the dryer in Marion come to mind.

I did not love the way you broke the door off of our oven days before I hosted Christmas for 15, but I do love the resourceful way you got it fixed.

I love the way you sat alone on all seven flights to, within, and from Hawaii (see above).  I love the way you could laugh about some of your particularly colorful seatmates. I love the way you always give me the aisle at a wedding.

I love the way you make coffee in the mornings (sometimes, feel free to bump that up to always).

I love the way we spin and run together.

I love the relationship you had with my father and the one you have with my mother.  I’ll never forget the look on her face on Christmas Eve when you sat at the head of the table, in Dad’s seat.

I love the way you make me laugh, and our long list of private jokes (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” A-Aron, and the Kailach family come to mind).

I love the way you ziplined in Hawaii, even though I know it sort of unnerved you at first (see video above).

I love the way you call your mother every day.

I love the way you read books.  I do not love the way it often takes another person recommending a book I’ve already suggested for you to read it, and for you to comment on what a great suggestion that was X made!

I love the deep, almost-impossible way that we can relate to each others’ realities right now.  I do not love the way this makes us blow up at each other sometimes, but I do love the way we let the dust settle, remind each other of what’s going on, say I’m sorry, and move forward.

I love the way you told me, when we were on our honeymoon, that “I like to get up the morning and do things!” and yet sometimes you need me to remind you of the wisdom of this comment.  We’re all better when we get up the morning and do something.

I love hearing you speaking to our children, and watching you parent them.  I love seeing aspects of you animate in them.

I love the notes you leave for me, in my wallet, on my desk, often in brown ink written by my father’s fountain pen.

I love you for a million other reasons, big and small, and I’m not listing here.  I hope you know what some of them are, and I consider it one of the tasks of my life to keep telling you.

I love them, and I love you, and I love our family.  If we can make it through this past year, we can make it thrpugh anything.

Happy birthday.

Previous birthday posts are here: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010.