(elusivefrown)

I can count my blessings on one hand. On one tiny little hand.

I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t know if the stars are aligned or my chi is centered or some guy just moved his couch closer to the TV and perfected his feng shui. I don’t know if it’s God or Buddha or Yahweh or Zeus or the Easter Bunny or a mysterious woman with a hat and a typewriter. It might be that I just had three Diet Pepsis in 20 minutes and I am feeling good about life.

I never understood a blessing until you came along. The way they say God sends you someone and they make your life better, I never believed that. I felt the rain on my face on hot days, I felt Neosporin seizing my wounds, I felt a hand in mine during the scary parts of movies, but I never felt saved. When I was driving home, I would look at the sky and it made something inside of me go alight. I would lay in bed and look around my room and my life and feel almost complete. The radio would play eight of my favorite songs in a row, and I’d sing my lungs out and smile like an idiot and know deeply that the universe was headed my direction. There are days and moments when I feel lucky to be alive and full of good intentions. But I felt those things only sometimes, and for an hour at most.

Who knew God’s delivery service was so goddamn slow? You took days to get to me. I couldn’t sleep the night before your birthday, or when I did I was sledding without snow, bungee jumping without a rope. In my dreams I met a hundred people and I immediately forgot their names. I forgot the names of people I’d known my whole life, because I was waiting just for you.

The day you were born, Robert Mikol, it was like all of those other moments came together. They combined in duration and intensity and it felt like my chest would explode for a thousand years. You are everything pure and beautiful and good in this universe, and I am going to do everything I can to make that last forever for you.

I’ve got so many plans for us. We’re going to build whole cities out of Legos, tie-dye entire wardrobes, fingerpaint the new classics. I’m going to teach you a life lesson every day, sometimes two or three, and you won’t listen at the time, I’m sure. I pray you won’t listen, because this is going to be one hell of an adventure. For all of us.