Perhaps we need bigger calendars, perhaps more white space below the numbers that speak out the day we’re wandering through. Perhaps the celebrations are too few, the balloons un-inflated and flaccid in the bottom drawers of our least used cabinets, the banners folded onto themselves, stacks of letters that spell out two words we don’t offer up enough—Happy Birthday.
Perhaps we’re born a million times, perhaps some are more important than others. Certainly the first, for the strain and the pain and the ecstasy of new life held tightly as though we were breakable things, certainly this. What then of all those that come?
What of the birth of imagination when we first put crayon to paper, scribble out the shapes in our secret thoughts, what of the new skin we grow the first time our feelings are hurt by someone we trusted its tenderness to? What of the explosion into a new body when our lips first press against another’s lips, shaking, confused, hopeful for their proficiency?
Two days and an unspoken number of years ago, you fell into this world, this time, only miles from where I laid my toddler head on tiny pillow. I believe in the shockwave that life creates, believe it spreads out like ripple on quiet pond and shakes all within its radius. I believe I woke when you were born, though I’ve no proof to offer it, call it truth that I lifted my eyes into the dark air around me and whispered in unsteady words. Welcome back, said I in the quiet hours, welcome home.
Born again that day, and so I say we share it, though I’ll not blow out the candles, I’ll not waste your wishes nor unwrap your gifts.
I began when you began, my life is tied to yours.
When mine comes, cake with candles dancing on some hot summer evening, I’ll use my wishes then, ask for light speed to move backwards, to rewind the clocks and refill all those missed years when I did not know the weight of your hand inside mine. I’ll pay closer attention, I promise, watch the stretching timelapse of growth, of pencil marks on the corners of walls, three feet, four, four to five, here the ruler atop your hair. I’ll mark the minutes and call forth celebration for every detail I never go to know, I will redden my hands with applause, hoarse my throat with all its praising. I will do this, I will float like ghost alongside all the unnoticed and unremarked. I will do this.
Again a ripple came, another stone in another water, though this one was deeper, though these waves grand. Days beyond another eighth day of another eleventh month, under-revered and poorly celebrated, the soft undulation that began the day of your birth finally found its way to my shores. We met on a cold twelfth day of November, and I knew then what I still know now: You began this life of mine.
Fifteen then, third of our teenage years, I shall call myself two days from this day. Light the flames and we will blow them out together. Mine is tied to yours, I would not be should you have never been.
I believe we are born a billion times, some tied to circumstance, some to choice, some to the wild randomness the universe affords, all we cannot control, the stones tossed into the center of our stillness. I believe we reincarnate within the skin we wear, tiny explosions for tiny shifts, and this body holds it, shakes like bomb disposal—dozens and dozens of detonations that warp our outsides.
This time, this day two beyond the best day, it is you I celebrate. You that spills out like perforated watering can, spreading your joy without ever noticing your evaporation. I will follow you, the very least I can do, and pour all I am into your reservoir, keep you filled, control your leaking, for I know you’ll never patch your holes, I know you will not deprive the world of your water. Grow, you say with each footstep forward, each droplet that falls, grow.
And so they grow.
I celebrate you with rambling meditation, this sloppy monologue of misplaced adoration. I celebrate you with words, with my own tender heart, I consecrate all the days around your day, call this month yours and yours alone.
Thank you, to this sprawling life, for bringing you to me. Thank you for the ripples that started small but became tsunami, for the ears on you that heard my infant whispers that welcomed you back the moment you first opened your eyes. Welcome back, said I, and then waited.
Happy Birthday my love. Thank you, for starting my life.
Is mine tied to yours?
I begin when you began?
Did you start my life?
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