Haikus for Mom's Birthday

She spoke the truth when

she said: Here's to the mother

who let her do it.

Like the brown groundhog,

you're my brunette cautionary

for not fucking up.

No one makes breakfast

--waffles, bacon, scrambled eggs--

like you do, at noon.

For each of your gifts,

you are thoughtful of your theme:

mostly, it's called love.

I can talk a lot

of nothing of consequence;

thank you for listenin'.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMA....

A Birthday Poem

We rode the train from Brighton to London yesterday through hills and fields covered in snow. It was beautiful. Breathtaking. And I decided to write a poem as we went, a poem about the different shapes of the day of my birth. Later on, at the party in Balham Bowls Club, I read it to the friends of mine who had gathered for the red balloon bash.

Here it is for you:

On the Day of My Birth

There was a pond kept neat for winter revelers

and we skated in seven degree weather,

four of us teens tucked away in a mountain secret.

Before that, the snow fell on Turre St.

in flakes the size of cotton balls on my birthday

as my friends took their sleeping bags

and backpacks from their parents' cars

and giggled their way into the house.

For the next three years, it snowed on the day of my birth

and we piled into Mom's peach mobile, drove

around the town looking at Christmas lights and singing carols.

Later, on the day of my birth,

my lover got on a place and moved home.

A year after, she came back to collect me

but first snuggled into the white duvet,

our room the third floor of an art deco hotel.

On the day I was born, I've been ill, my partner's been sick,

and I've worked a Sunday shift. My dad's given me an opal

necklace, to keep the fire of his love close to my heart.

My mom sends a book of poetry each year.

When I turned three, I'd celebrated in so many house,

I asked if I was now four. And once, we had a party in June

when I was five and a half and it wasn't the day of my birth at all.

Twenty-six years on, I've seen a quarter century,

made new homes and new friends, and ice skated

more time than I can remember.

A snowflake drifting on the day of my birth.

Grams

Today, my great-grandmother would have been 101.

For the last four days or so, I have been thinking of Grams, missing her, wearing the cross she bequeathed me--a cross she received on her 50th wedding anniversary from my great-grandfather, Gramps. I was one month old at their party and there is a square, tinted photograph of me swaddled in her arms and my great-grandfather looking on: their first great-granddaughter.

The necklace is a gold cross with inlay black onyx and a tiny pearl set just in the middle. I've worn it to special occasions since she passed in January 2009--weddings, rehearsal dinners, nice dinners out--but the last few weeks I've been wearing it when I thought of her, to work, during the day. I find it difficult, intellectually, to wear a religious symbol with so much weight to it--that's how I hold it in my mind anyway--but I find comfort in the closeness of her spirit.

Grams was also a Sagittarius and there are certain things during the holiday season that inevitably remind me of her: singing in the choir; wrapping presents with neat corners (she taught me the right way to wrap them in 6th grade when I used to come over and wrap her grab bag gifts...); and her wise tip of the "Deary-to-Deary" present, a necessary shopping purchase in the run-up to Christmas.

I had the extreme fortune of knowing 5 great-grandparents in my life, all on my father's side. Almost none was more complex or familiar than my relationship with Grams: I was the little girl who didn't want to be a "little girl" and the one who came after-school to help her around the house in junior high. While we weren't explicit in my relationship with Alex, her approval that she liked her meant very much.

The last time I saw her, she was asleep in bed and I woke her to say goodbye: I was leaving to move to England. She smiled at me, at Alex, and I knew she would be done with this world soon enough. She had had her run and now it was time to be reunited with all those that had gone before her. She was ready.

Happy Birthday, Grams. We're thinking of you.

Oh, the snow....

Hello, again.

I know what you might be thinking, 'Did she write a poem today?'

No, I didn't write a poem, but it did snow in London. Quite a lot for the city, in fact, over the last two days and moments of my day have been quite poetic enough for this, the 1st December.

The holidays really are here--and when I say the holidays, I really mean my birthday, the countdown begun. I can't help but think of my birthday and snow as two peas in a pod. Sure, when I was little I yearned for the pool party, the popsicles, the summers running around in the sun (credit to my parents, I did get an un-birthday party in June once. It was a blast!).

But then, I wouldn't have the snow. Or ice skating. Or memories of hot chocolate and piling into the peach mobile to go look at all the Christmas lights around little ol' Yreka with all my pre-teen friends.

I can't help it, I was giddy today that it was December. Hello, birthday month. Hello, holidays. Hello, snow and hot chocolate and the end-of-the-year reflections. Another season has passed, another year older. And, another white winter in London Town.

Decorating for a Birthday Party

On Saturday, my love and I baked cupcakes for a friend's birthday and traversed south London by bus and by train with a dozen birthday balloons to decorate the flat for the party.

The very shape of balloons is tantalizing.

The way the light reflects and bounces

as the orb responds to the currents

of conversations, the draft of the door.

For my cousin's birthday

Happy Birthday, Kay! This one's for you.

My Cousin

When the man you loved
took you to The Great White North,
I refused to call him anything but
The Man Who Took Kay Kay Away...

Then he turned out
to be quite alright after all
and you incredibly happy.

So when it came time
and I fell head over heels
for a woman from The Great British Isles,
I took your lead and followed her here.

Because, all my memories of you,
the many photographs through the years,
are of you beside me,
letting me know it's OK,
telling me you're proud of who I am,
confirming that so much is possible
when you go for what you want, with love.

For Wednesday - My Birthday

Yes, it is way past my birthday. And, I'm still thinking about it. It relates to the momentum taking place in my life, the changes, the building of energy I am trying to create.

Somewhere out in the world, and on the coffee table at Stewart Springs, there is a birthday book which tells you what kind of person you are based on what day you were born. December 20th is apparently the day of The Generator. As such a person, one is very good at short term bursts of energy, starting up projects, etc. with skill and enthusiasm to lift them off the ground. People of my birth, well, we generate anything from creative endeavors to technical projects. When I read that description, it really made sense: I love starting up a new project, getting it off the ground. And I am damn good at it. I'd also like to stick around a bit longer to see how it pans out.

Yo Birthday

Birthdays are a funny thing. There's all the anticipation of it arriving, and then the pressure to the day. Given that Christmas celebrations tend to overshadow any glimpse of birthdays in December (gifts arriving on time, availability to attend parties, etc) I've taken to just celebrating the whole month. Whenever a package arrives, I'll open it.

This year we celebrated the day before my birthday this year, December 19th. We went out into central London for the day--brunch at Rick's, Clapham Common, Somerset House Super Christmas Market, lunch at Wahaca (oh, Wahaca, I love thee), Where the Wild Things Are at the Cinema, ending with the Brighton Gay Men's Chorus (with sister-in-law, Erica, performing too!) at the Barbican theatre. A fantastically long day.

Then I woke up Sunday to get ready for work and Alex ill over the toilet. For as much as I wanted to feel differently, for a slight moment, it was an anticlimax. And the day was still beautiful. After work, we went for drinks with two of my closest friends in London. Twenty-Five, 25. A quarter of a century.

It's My Birthday Weekend...

Feeling so loved.

A Snowflake Baby

Alex's mum just told me that on the day she was born, April 1, it snowed. The doctor didn't believe her when she told him it was snowing outside, patting her hand, but it snowed. Her little snowflake.

I think it's a sign.

For Wednesday - Snow

It snowed in London today. I was sat at a long computer desk upstairs in a high-ceiled, big windowed office in Belsize Park--a beautiful, quiet part of North London--when I looked up and saw the snow lightly falling through the small window, over the rooftops. I spun my chair around to face the wall of windows behind me and watched as the snowflakes fell larger and larger and the wind moved them in swirls to the black pavement. The snow did not stick to the ground, but melted. My heart, though, was floating and I breathed deeply as I smiled...

The first time I saw snowflakes that large before--the size of a quarter or a 50p coin--it was my birthday and I was turning 12. My friends from 6th grade were all arriving via their parents' cars, pulled up in the middle of the road, the snow quickly accumulating on the ground, parked under the yellow street lamp to unload overnight stuff, sleeping bags, pillows and presents. From that year on, it snowed on my birthday every year until I left home. And even then, there has been at least a light dusting on the ground when I've woken, if not more.

Sure, my birthday is in December and the likelyhood of it snowing is greater than say, if I was born in August, and yet, that first year of snow, heavy snow, on my birthday was the first time it'd snowed all season. Like magic.

I was so happy to see it snow yesterday that it could have very well been my birthday yesterday anyway.