April 10, 2025
Happy Birthday, Thomas, my dear.

I'm trying to write about love tonight, so I guess it makes sense that I start by wishing you a Happy Birthday.  I certainly do love you and our crazy relationship has allowed us to investigate love.  We've known each other for 40 years, but I'm sorry we didn't know each other even younger.  Please stay healthy and stick around for the next 30, ok?  





I guess this is the first man I loved.  He was handsome, really smart, loved poetry, was a gifted musician and was really messed up.  Sound familiar, remind you of any others?  He set the bar fairly high in the beginning.  









But now I am staring in the face of loosing another important person in my life, all I want is my Mother.  She's been gone almost 15 years and still when I am in a position that I'm not quite sure what to do, not quite sure what my actions should be, when I'm feeling like I need someone I trust by my side while I make those decisions, I still want her to come.   Sometimes she does, sometimes I'm open enough to feel her there urging me to do my best.  She is still a light in the storm.  I need her today.  I need her specific brand of light and guidance.

Another person I love with electric intensity, with a past life connection, with the strength of waves at Big Sur is about to change plains, leave this world, not be physically available if I need him.  

I know this is cheesy, but I really am wrestling with what is love.   It's that beat your heart misses when you see them.   It's that smile you can share across a crowded dance floor.  It's knowing what he wants for his birthday dinner.  It's needing to tell them about this book you just found or the song you just heard that caught you up, made you want to hear it a hundred times.

But it is also that sense you can't articulate but you know feeds your pores, soaks into your skin and nurtures your soul.  

I think of the hours of phone calls he and I have shared, used to pay for and I am mystified by how much time we could fill up.  We could analyze anything to death.  We could find the most remote characteristics of a situation and mull over them for eternity.  That's love.   




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