192: for chris

It's important to note these sorts of passing days: today is my friend Chris's birthday. She now enters that tenuous last year of twenty, the one I just stumbled into a few months ago, though I'm certain she's doing so with much more grace.

I simply wanted to pause today to celebrate today here, to explain exactly why it is that I'm so grateful for my friend Chris. She's probably not-so-thrilled with this sort of spotlight thrust upon her, though maybe deep down she's secretly please.

Chris came into my life in a middle school French class, and we did not exactly get along. We were thirteen; sometimes girls are more prone to raising hackles and whatnot, jealous and annoyed simultaneously. No matter what the cause, by the time we graduated from high school, we were linked, visiting each other in college, writing each other letters, and two summers ago, we even journeyed together to the Carolinas to visit our beloved friend Nikki who was working there for quite some time.

I love Chris because she is courageous, because she does not accept crap but finds her way into better situations, because she's got spirit and spunk, because she loves to dance, because she is so good with the soil that she found herself a community garden plot rather than just deal with apartment restraints, because she's an entomologist and can fill me up with facts I absolutely love to know (and can later use in poems), because she's gorgeous, because she reads a ton, because she's endlessly supportive, because she's inspiring, because she's brave enough to backpack through Europe (alone!) for a month, because she's smart with money, because she grows these gorgeous tomatoes and turns them into delicious tomato soup, because she bakes great bread, because her plants make me happy, because she lived without TV for years and was perfectly content, because she keeps good company, because she gets excited, because she's curious, because she's passionate, because she's got this giant heart that fills me up and makes me feel so happy to be around her, because she is exactly who she is, take her or leave her, and that's exactly how she should be.

Happy birthday, Chris.

And finally, that beekeeping persona poem I wrote based on your Texas trip? It's up on the website.