To Geoff

Happy birthday, Geoff. I’m sorry that you have to share your birthday most years with Mother’s Day — it’s just too bad. Although I like that you were born in early May. It’s just right.

I did all of my usual preparations for your birthday celebration this year. I picked out cards, shopped with the kids for your gifts — you know that I can’t settle on just one — I baked a breakfast cake for you, and I will bake a birthday cake tomorrow. But this year as I prepared, I reflected on how close we came to not making it to another round of birthdays together. Man, we have been through a tough few months. If someone had told me on New Year’s Eve that we twice would have seriously entertained the D-word before May, I would not have believed them. Not in a million years. But, sadly, it’s true.

2013 has tested us, Geoff. But I say, we are strong. You, and you alone, have answered so many questions for me in my life. You’ve done it without trying, often before the question was asked or even thought. I have loved you ever since I’ve been capable of loving someone else. Simply for being you. I began from a place of having no other comparison and needing none. As we got older, I deliberately chose you and you again, always you, because I wanted that legacy, and because I wanted to be that to you.

Now I say we are a team. I think that the past few months have proven that beyond any doubt. We stick together and we protect each other. You are my barometer and you are my bodyguard. I am your sounding board and your travel guide.

Geoff, you don’t have a room in my heart. You are my heart’s wild, unmapped, mostly unexplored exterior. You could never be boarded up, and there is no escaping you.

Thanks for being you, Geoff. I love you.