Crackle, Rustle, Happy Birthday

Crackle, crackle, crackle, crackle.


I moved.


Crackle, crackle, crackle, crackle.


I lifted my arm.


Rustle, rustle, rustle, rustle.


I shifted.


Crackle, rustle, rustle, crackle, crackle.


I opened my eyes.


I was covered in a few hundred little pieces of paper.
I lifted one up and looked at it. I squinted and read the tiny writing.


I love you.


I turned my head. He smiled and said, "I love you."


It was the spring of 1974 and the man I was living with but not living with not according to if you'd asked my parents, the man I would later marry and later divorce had covered me in hundreds of I love you's. It was one of the reasons I  loved him and one of the reasons he claimed a piece of my heart and one of the reasons he still has the key to that piece of my heart. It was one of the reasons that it is always worth loving, even when we change, even when we walk apart and away. It is one of the reasons that as we continue to become who we are, the people who have loved us or shared with us become even more important.


It is your birthday today Wingfield.
Close your eyes and imagine that I have sent a shower of hundreds of little pieces of paper floating down on you, some of them say, I love you and some of them say Thank you and some of them say, Happy Birthday and some of them simply crackle and rustle for the remembering and for the fun of the sound of it.