My Birthday Girl

My little bird.

You are the most emotionally honest person I know.
If you think it, you'll say it.
If you feel it, you'll holler it.

I want to be as fearless and open as you, girl of the kiss curls and the pixie eyes.
Oh what thoughts swim in those unfathomable waters?

When we were sowing our Spring greens you dug up my viola's with a kind of earnest care.
Then you lovingly replanted the bindweed I'd spent a morning grappling with.

You said it was your special plant.

The plant with the pure white shell flowers that could almost, almost be mistaken for lilies and the strong, fibrous, unyielding roots.

You spend most of your days happily playing in the garden or painting your hands.

You know you were born almost 10 pounds and Eskimo-like.

I met my own reflection within your beautiful brown eyes that day.
There was something sacred in their deep pools.

High cheek boned, heart shaped faced, beauty.
I stared at you in wonder for hours into the dark, murmuring quiet of that mid-May night.

The day Daddy and I came home from the hospital , fish and chips wrapped tight under one arm your car seat hooked on the other, Matilda stared, wide eyes swimming across your little face for hours.
She wouldn't leave your side.
She would try to stroke your soft velveteen forehead and press her cheek close to yours to feel your warmth.

I had know idea what incredible, sacred, elemental lessons you would teach me.
I had no idea that you would break my delicate porcelain life apart and remould it into something, truer, more useful, more authentic and indeed, more beautiful.

You make me thankful for every small precious act of kindness, every shard of reflected light, every swilled rainbow in every muddy puddle.

My lovely girl today, you were five.

Seraphina, I hope you will always fly free.