The Greatest Gift - You!

It’s unseasonably warm today, little sweetheart, and although I got a late start on the day and then had things to do at home, I wanted to get out before the sun went down and enjoy the fresh air. I took my headphones with me, so I could call Sylvia before it got to be too late in France but they weren’t working. I could barely hear anything. I disconnected them and put the phone to my ear and could instantly hear much better. Something is wrong with the headphones, I thought, and when I got home I checked and confirmed that was the case.

Many Christmases ago, I remember, you gave me a very nice air of earbuds. I had a bottom of the line cellphone - the free one they used to give you just for signing up for service with AT&T - and you thought if we were going to be on the phone so much that I should have them. I thanked you and kissed you and we were sitting at the red table here in the apartment and I tried to connect them but the phone was so crappy they wouldn’t work. You were pretty annoyed by that and I apologized all over the place.

Just a week or so later we were back in California and one day we drove up to see your folks. You told your dad you thought it would be a great Christmas present if he wanted to add me to the Serafin family plan on AT&T and avail ourselves of a new iPhone for our trouble and give it to… me. A testament to the ineffable generosity of both you and your beautiful parents, he didn’t even flinch, just took me in the car with him, drove over to the AT&T store and got me a new phone, an iPhone, my first one. When we got back to the house, you immediately took it out of my hands and typed all your info into my Contacts. The first one. You. Entering yourself not as Summer but as “Cheeky”. Quite right.

Finally, I had a phone to fit the lovely earbuds you’d gotten me. They went with me everywhere, of course, and for years, even the lost, inconsolable ones after your tragic passing. One day I was walking through the park listening to an SF Giants baseball game and I noticed one of the earbuds, the left one, had gone silent. I looked all over the place for someone who could repair them even though everyone said it would be cheaper just to buy a new pair., Finally, I found some guys down in the garment district. Later they also fixed that crappy old bottom of the line phone I’d had so that I could save all the texts you’d sent me before I’d gotten the iPhone. I painstaking took a picture of each text with my iPhone, aiming it at the screen of the old phone until I had all 200 or so of them.

Anyway… the headphones. The were able to fix them but they had to replace the little speakers inside the earbuds themselves and although it worked both left and right again, the sound wasn’t quite the same. It was kind of toppy, more treble than bass. And anyway I didn’t want to wear them out again, so I slipped them back into the lovely little black pouch they’d come in and I had saved all this time and put them on the red table with all your things there, kind of part of the shrine.

Tonight, I took them out for the first time since then and still a bit toppy, I didn’t mind so much. I’m ordering another regular old pair of Apple earbuds but it’s lovely to have these so very special ones in my ears tonight, little sweetheart. It brings you close to me.

May it always be so. With all my love and gratitude forever. Your Michael…