quarter

he is 25 today. happy birthday if you read this. i did think of you. i thought of you weeks ago. and today. i'm just broke and too self-absorbed to materialistically manifest the thought. i will call sometime soon. i hope you celebrated something fierce. thinking of you being a quarter-century old today almost makes me cry (like everything else). i think of my favorite picture of us, me in the center soaking up all the attention with my gap-toothed beaming smile and my lopsided unraveling braids, you on my right, under the crook of my arm, not daring to stare directly into the lens, your heavy cokebottles slipping off your nose despite their ribbed red elastic band, your shirt dotted with spiderman pins, your hands preoccupied below the border with some entrancing action figure, him on my left, under the crook of my arm, gazing shyly toward the camera, the deep dimples indenting his speckled cheeks, the tousled mop of thick, blonde hair falling nearly to his eyes. we were so happy and naughty and little and innocent then. fifteen years later you're about to embark on an incredibly adult life that i can only hope doesn't utterly consume all remnants of the comic-obsessed little boy you once were, i'm still struggling to play mama with a straight face and he's isolated, sleeping in a tank somewhere in the desert. happy birthday. i wonder if this day still makes you think of crab legs.
seeing her today was helpful. she reiterated a lot of what he's been telling me all along, but it was particularly useful to have her mostly objective perspective. i need to force myself to use this space better. she thinks it would be helpful to write, and i agree. it will just involve a little more tenacity that i'm currently accustomed to employing. she ended with identification of my pattern and the underlying problem: i still think i need to earn affection/appreciation, which ties directly into his request that i think seriously about why i deserve to be loved. tomorrow, the list. tomorrow, the reasoning. i love blue collar. basic accomplishment suits me well.