#18 Happy Birthday, my Darling

01/31/10 - 9:40 PM

Happy Birthday, my Darling,

I’m in Savannah with the Ducks.  Yesterday was Zona Rosa.  I am too tired to write more tonight.  Your birthday has wrung me dry in spite of the fact that I kept busy and cooked shrimp and grits for the Ducks and chauffeured Addie around.  I couldn’t stay busy enough to keep the tears away.  I miss you in a way that is eating my heart away - again.  

11:25 PM

Exhausted, but unable to sleep, I have been lying here in bed, thoughts racing around in my head like the tigers in Little Black Sambo, making me feel as though my brain might melt into butter.  Thoughts of Mama’s recipe for oyster stew came out of nowhere, then I thought I might make some for myself soon but dismissed the idea because I knew I wouldn’t eat it if I made it.  Maybe that came from the butter/brain image.  She used a ton of butter, which is of course why it was so good.

     I even tuned my iPod to Dan Gibson's  Natural Stress Relief  in an effort to soothe the churning in my head.  It's pleasant, but it just made me wish I were home in our bed where for years we went to sleep to it every night .  I started thinking that if I didn't write down these thoughts now I would lose the language and some of its power.  So, here I am.
     My facebook post (Happy Birthday, My Darling Clint. I will love you forever). keeps coming into my head, saying it is too much and not enough.  What is there for me to say?  Do I need to detail all the tears I have shed this day?  The times I have retreated to the patio to smoke and cry?  The stabbing pain that melts into an ache permeating every cell of my body and?
     Tomorrow I am going to post another poem on this blog, and I have my knickers all in a twist about it.  It's about a snake.  Yesterday, Rosemary suggested that I write it in first person, and I am been stewing over that.  I am NOT a snake.  I just wish I could be one sometimes.  I'm leaving it alone except for a little copy editing.  I like it the way it is.

  I have spent the weekend surrounded by two loving and supportive families:  my Zona Rosa family and my Duck family - Mike and Polly and Addie (my heart’s love and only biological grandchild) and Ellery and Isabel and Michael.  (My wonderful grandchildren who came as a bonus when Polly married Mike and they began making these amazing babies).  God only knows how I would have fared if I were alone.  I am thankful for my families, for the love they give so freely, the way they make me laugh and think and yes, forget for moments or even hours, that you are gone, that you should be here having a birthday party.

  When you first told me your mother never had a birthday party for you, I didn’t believe it.  Over the years, I learned it to be the unthinkable truth.  No wonder, when we first met, you said you didn’t know how to love because you weren’t sure you ever had been.  But I came along and loved you, loved you deeply, almost painfully so, and you learned to return that love a thousand times over.  Yes, I will always love you.  That’s enough, and it’s not too much.  It just is.  Now maybe I can go to sleep.

Good night, My Love,
Your Fat Girl