So, I’ve spent my birthday surrounded with people. Some of the best people, really – awesome creatures who I’ve known for a long, long time. I place such importance in people just met, but these are the ones that have bothered with me, stuck by me, cared and Loved and watched me be stupid and smart and daring and scared.
But I miss my Dad.
It’s my first birthday without him and it was so stupid. They told him how bad the cancer was on my birthday and that was stupid. I don’t have better words for how the world works than that… just… stupid. I come home and I’m trying to clear my head – I’m reading the Princess Bride – all these years and I’ve never read it – I picked up a copy from Target the other day while waiting to renew my license… and it starts with a description of how the guy who made it into a movie was introduced to it while he was sitting in bed, recovering from pneumonia… his father read it to him in broken English – and this THING comes flooding back… I haven’t remembered it in years. An ancient book that my dad used to read bedtime stories out of – Aladin and the Liliputians and rocs and – and I don’t remember the stories, but I remembered where the book was kept. It’s still there.
There aren’t many THINGS that are important – I don’t even know what to do with the family Bible – that’s just history. But this book is yellowed and crisp and beautiful and politically incorrect – and my introduction to all these other worlds. Hell, it’s my introduction to dreams and the idea that I should try to Live as if the world was as I wanted rather than as it is.
I usually give my Uncle George credit for introducing me to fantasy – stealing away to his basement room at my Grandparents’ house and watching old Beta copies of the Hobbit… how could I have forgotten this book? And my father reading to me on the bed he’d built for me?
He always had cold fingers…
I’m tired and guilty and 31. Prime again. Indivisible. I hope there’s strength in that number. Last year wasn’t so good.
