It’s one day late, but in my mind, it’s never too late to say happy birthday to someone you love!
Because saying happy birthday just means you want to celebrate the day someone joined this world and eventually ended up in your life as an irreplaceable gift that only that person can bestow just by being alive. I know that’s extra sappy, but I guess I’m kind of a mushy-mess when it comes to my feelings about the birthday girl in question:
Charlotte…
She’s a one-of-a-kind beauty who shares my storyteller’s heart and my twisty imagination. She feels like more than my best friend’s daughter to me. She feels like my family. And…she feels like a little soul mate who didn’t get to choose to have me in her life but has let me in any way. And once I was in, my love for Charlotte has never changed. It’s solid and it’s permanent.
I put an old picture in the header of this post of Charlotte and her mom with me at some New York City eatery. I think it was taken about eight years or so ago. I don’t know for sure if it was her birthday or, if true to form, I was celebrating her life on an ordinary day with no particularly interesting date. But I do know for sure what this picture was all about.
I had just given Charlotte a necklace with several glass beads on the chain. The beads represented hopes. There was a bead of hope that represented the hopes her mom had for her, one for the hopes I had for her, and of course, a bead to represent the hopes she had for herself. I remember clasping that chain around Charlotte’s neck and noticing how delicate and stunning she is. And I can remember thinking how the bead on the chain that represents my hopes for her needed to be much bigger to contain my thoughts and feelings for this girl…
But even when you love someone as much as I love Charlotte, everyone is only entitled to have hopes — not dreams or expectations…or demands — for another person in this life.
Even if the things you want for someone else are unselfish or dwarf anything you could ever want for yourself.
The dance of free will and love is so complicated, but the thing that gives that dance it’s most worthy movement is hope. When life gets tangled up, and you grow weary, it’s the feeling of hope that keeps us moving. And when the steps get all confused, and the dance stops making sense, it’s the strength of our hope that lifts our chins so we can see a greater Partner there waiting to guide us, as well the loved ones around us who will always carry hopes for us when we can’t seem to find any hope of our own.
Before I gave her that necklace, I infused so many hopes for Charlotte in that little bead — and I know her mother did, too. And to watch Charlotte grow into this regal and elegant young woman has been such a surprising story to witness. She’s like one of the best stories you can sink your heart into because she’s never boring, always unpredictable, and sometimes, a little too dramatic! But she’s always present, and always fascinating…and, Charlotte is always worthy of my heart’s deepest investment.
When I look at Charlotte now, she’s all grown up.
And she’s so gorgeous that she almost hurts my eyes!
But she mostly just makes me happy…because she’s Charlotte, and I love her.
She’s a woman with her whole life ahead of her… But to me, she’ll always be this clever girl with a witty mind and lots of ideas to test and try in her own way. And, I know all these years later, whether she’s wearing that necklace or not, the hopes her mother and I have for her still hover around her all the time.
But it’s the hopes she has for herself that I pray will keep her looking up and always dancing forward.
I love you, Charles Looney the Third…
