Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, my little sweetheart! Thinking of you, as always, and remembering the wonderful times we had together on three of your birthdays:

The first in Boston when you were doing Rock n Roll at The Huntington. The next in San Francisco when I spent the week gathering presents for you including your main gift (surprising you with a pair of long feathered earrings we'd seen together at Needles & Pens, in The Mission) and in 2010 when I took you to the hot springs in Calistoga (picture from our dinner there that night below!). 

I stayed up late last night working on a new Bipolar Explorer video that we released this morning in your honor. It's on our YouTube channel. 

I love you with all my heart. Happy Birthday, little sweetheart! 

The Permanent Connection

Little sweetheart, remember the refrigerator, here? It’s the same one that was in operation from the day I arrived decades ago. An ancient warhorse, I’m guessing it has probably been here since the Kennedy Administration. It’s the kind where you have to defrost the freezer regularly. If you don’t it becomes like an igloo and you can only shove a thing or two into the tunnel of space between walls of icy tundra.

Last year, it seemed to be on its last legs, and the landlord sent a repairman over here who took one listen to it and pronounced it a blown condenser, un-fixable because trusty don’t even make parts for it anymore. That was a year ago. I don’t like to make trouble, so I sat on it for another four seasons until now when even at full blast, it wasn’t keeping things cool. To my astonishment the landlord agreed to replace it and they brought a new one over here earlier yesterday.

Every time I would defrost the old one. I would take everything out, placing all the most perishable stuff in a cooler and filling it with a five pound bag of ice from the deli, to keep cold until the arduous operation was completed a few hours later.

At the back of the fridge on the top shelf is a collection of things of yours, little sweetheart, from your last time here, that I’ve saved all these years. Some crisps, some sweets and a favorite soda, salad dressing, some barley from a recipe I made especially for you. Each time I defrosted, I would carefully save them all, transferring them to a little box and then putting them back after everything was defrosted and cleaned. Yesterday, I did that again, and returned them to the brand new fridge.

The front of the old one also had many pictures of you - including one of you at a fridge (at my mom’s, wrapped in a blue towel post-shower and looking for a yogurt)  - and some other mementos, a ticket from the Leonard Cohen show you took me to in Oakland for my birthday and the receipt from our trip to the spa in Calistoga, on yours. I carefully removed them and this morning put them all back on the front of the new one.

Some things change but others are forever. Isn’t that right, little sweetheart? 

Calistoga and the fires

Little sweetheart, there are terrible wildfires spreading all through California and today I got an alert on my phone that the beautiful little village, Calistoga, where I took you for your 31st birthday was evacuated.

Known for its hot springs, we drove there from SF the morning of the 13th and checked-in to a nice little hotel before trying out a few of the pools, like Goldilocks - this one too hot, this one just right. You had your enormous black sunhat perched on your head as we took a dip in outdoor one there and you wrapped yourself around me as I carried you across its length, the water coming up to my chin. Later, we went out to dinner at the lovely Calistoga Inn which had a restaurant and brewery (the latter, admitted, I sampled because you'd told me it was alright as long as I was with you, I should only drink when I was happy and how true - I could only ever be happy at your side). Passing through the lobby and peaking upstairs at the cozy furnishings and quaint decor we made a note to stay there the next time. And we took a walk through the sweet little main street. The next morning we'd booked you a massage - a whole hour and a half! - and I waited at a charming little coffee place writing in my notebook.

I so hope everyone in Calistoga is okay, my darling. And I pray that the sweet little village itself that holds such lovely memories of my time with you, our times together, is spared and remains as it was.

Happy Birthday, Little Sweetheart

Little sweetheart... Happy Birthday! It's your 37th and I wake with thoughts of you, prayers for you and your name and spirit in every room.

I'm so very grateful for you, my darling. You found and saved me and brought such blindingly brilliant light and love into my life, the kind that could knock a man down. You felled me. You are my miracle girl.

I'm so very grateful, too, that we spent each of your birthdays together once we had become one. I remember the first in Boston when you were on the road doing Rock n Roll at The Huntington. It was brisk and wintry there already and I walked you to the stage door every night, watching the show from the orchestra almost every performance. On your birthday, after walking you there, I went grocery shopping, then back to the sweet little apartment where we were staying and made dinner and baked a cake for you to come home to.

The next year found us in San Francisco on the day. I'd been gathering lots of little presents for you with a plan to surprise and shower you with all the many gifts, securing and secreting them for you to find at last. I had most everything but while we were browsing at the great little punkrock bookstore, Needles and Pens, in The Mission, I saw how taken you were with a pretty set of feathered earrings. I quietly sneaked back later and bought them for you.

On your 31st, we decided to go up to Calistoga to the hot springs. We wended our way through the hills in your battered blue Prius and got there in the late afternoon. We checked in to a charming little room and then changed into our swimsuits to go visit the pools. You weren't crazy about the super hot one but the warm one was, Goldilocks-like, just right. You were, as ever, unbelievably stunning to every passerby, in your black one-piece, your perfect ivory skin, long red hair cascading over your porcelain shoulders and with your ever-present and enormous black sunhat perched on your head. Like a bathing beauty Zorro.

You wanted to wade across the pool into deeper waters but you didn't want to get submerged, so you wrapped yourself around me and I walked us across, a stately, striking procession. Carrying my giggling little mermaid. I can't think of too many times I was ever happier.

Little sweetheart, you are in my every thought, today and every day. I love you with all my heart and soul. And I'm sending all my love to you. May it fly to where you - closer than I can imagine. I know you're watching and guiding me safely toward you. You are my lookout, wrapped around my soul just like you wrapped yourself around me in Calistoga, taking me through the waters of the journey I must complete and then to be reunited with you so very soon and forever.

Thank you, my angel. My true love, my best friend, my soulmate, my partner, my gingersnap, my gorgeous gorgeous girl. Happy Birthday, Summer. Soon with you, my love, yes? Soon. So very soon. All my love... m

Lost & Found...

It's the first really warm day of Spring here, my little sweetheart,  so I was looking for a shirt to wear with shorts, looking for a flannel shirt that you gave me, my darling, that I hadn't worn in awhile but thought I might fit in again. Felt something in the pocket. A receipt. From dinner on your birthday in 2010 when I took you to the hot springs in Calistoga. What a wonderful couple of days that was! Oh, sweetheart. Found a picture of you from that dinner that night, too. My beautiful girl. My little best friend. My forever soulmate...