β€œIn ancient Japan, cherry blossoms had been emblematic of new life and new beginnings.” β€” Naoke Abe

Happy Birthday SharedBrain!

love notes sundays with sara Jul 10, 2021

Dearest M,

Today is your birthday, and as I started typing this note a giant ship in Boston Harbor sounded glorious 5 toots with their foghorn. I love that instead of one long blow of the horn per usual, it was 5 because 5 is your favorite number and here I am starting this love letter to you for your birthday.

Speaking of numbers, I love that we’re 10 days shy of being exactly 10 years apart. The number ten is associated with many symbols, including a return to unity. I’ve always felt that you were part of me before we ever met, that you coming into my life was as if I was returning home. A unity was returned to this world, and unity of us, of you and me.

In tarot, the 10th card — Wheel of Fortune — concerns the beginning of a new cycle, and we came together at the beginning of new cycles in both our lives. I love that your age now includes not only your favorite number, but added together create my favorite number. It’s hard to say what that means, if nothing other than simply being a cool fact, but I’d like to think it means it’s going to be a fruitful year somehow.

I remember the first time I went over to your house and you showed me your tea cabinet. The quantity and quality of the selection was on par with mine. I remember the day you left Texas and I was house sitting after all the boxes had been moved out. I looked in the empty tea cabinet and that’s when it hit me you were gone. I remember everything in between those moments, and everything since — okay, maybe not everything… but that’s why we’re an amazing pair because we can share the holding of memories in our SharedBrain.

Our afternoon teatimes are some of my favorite memories, waiting for the kids to get home from school after a morning filled with teaching at Cherry Blossom and musing about philosophy, boys, yoga, food, and so much more. Puttering around town in our Mini’s for juice and pedicures, post-yoga sushi and sweet treats, Buffy and burritos in bed holding hands, falling down rabbit holes, cocktails and trampolines and headstands. I love you for all the times we’ve cried and held each other, laughed and hugged each other, and everything in between.

I’m over the moon about how you’ve written poetry about me reading poetry to my veggie garden, and when I showed up for your Master’s graduation that’s how your class mates knew me. “Oh you’re Sara! So great to finally meet you!! How’s the kale?” (or sentiments similar to that effect, teehee)

You always made me feel smart and accepted, nourished and whole, and you still do even though life had taken us to nearly opposite ends of the country and we can’t see each other in person every day. I’ve shared parts of myself with you that nobody else has ever known, and you trusted me with yours, too.

Love and friendship like ours isn’t common — we both know this, we’ve discussed this. We are forever and beyond. I cannot wait to see where life takes us next, together in adventures as well as in our own independent escapades.

So on this the day of your birth, I want you to rest in the knowledge of my love for you, my effulgent elephant. Nourish yourself in the trust of our friendship, my powerfully badass wifey. Expand yourself into the world feeling me right there with you, my compassionately brave bestie.

There is always you, there is always me, there is always tea, and tea for we.

I lavalavalove you! Happy Birthday!!

 

Your wee wifey,

widow to your witch,

SharedBrain.

Always, always, always…

-S