TO JESSE
WHOM I LOVE MADLY
ON HIS 37TH BIRTHDAY,
JULY 2, 1997

Reasons why I love you
Part 1

You are so great under Coco's hypnosis, being "very very very a thousand times very scared" when you see a pacifier, saying "nice cotton" when you see cotton, patting Coco on the head and telling me "I love you so much, what can I do for you?" when you see me.

My children and all children adore you, the pied piper of North Cambridge.

You make me stay up and learn all about quantum mechanics and when we are done (at two in the morning), you start on geometry.

You laugh at my jokes, without my having to elbow you.

You are the smartest person I've ever known, knowing a little something about everything and having an opinion on it, knowledge obviously gleaned from years with all three volumes of the Bathroom Book.

You read the refrigerator "poems" with such meaning and cadence.

You have a perfect body. I love the way you look in short shorts, tailored suits and hospital pants with no shirt. I love your almost hairless chest and long muscular legs and firm, round butt. I love your clear masculinity with a hint of delicateness and femininity and a promise of endless possibilities. Sex with you is always good, never boring, full of imagination and intense reality. I love your eyes, golden brown and vulnerable, trusting, loving, flashing eyes. I love the way you walk so straight, and naked, so shamelessly. I love the way you have completely gotten over any shame of your butthole.

I love that you've written thousands of articles on so many subjects, thousands of letters. I love that you spent hours making all the wrongs that make a right.

I love your confidence/arrogance.

I love that you have traveled and tried to understand people of different cultures and thought of what the problems are in these places and what should be done to fix them.

I love your exuberant joy with the baby when he smiles as you change a poo, when you pick up Coco and swing her around, when you bench press Spike -- "Whoo"!

I love your sense of nobility from challenging evil ex husbands to duels, to being my hero and doing the laundry and folding it so nicely without being asked.

I love that you added hundreds of your own words complete with pronunciation to the American Heritage Dictionary. I love that 95% of the time if I ask you what a word means, you know.

I love your voice with that edge of John Lennon vulnerability.

I love that you play the piano from Sweet Baby James to Bach and that you think I can learn to sing better.

I love your competence at the computer, building a wonderful playroom and stairs out of a haunted cellar, drawing renditions of people that actually resemble them.

I love that you provide answers to Spike's questions on nuclear war, rocketships, black holes and more. I love that you go to their schools and teach the kids the Passover Story and the Hanukkah Story. I love that you do magic shows and face painting at birthday parties.

I love that you are the barefoot pirate, the hero I concocted in Spike's stories long before I met you.

I love that you'll try anything sexually from camisoles to candles and carrots.

I love that you know world politics so well, you can hold your own in a conversation with Johnny about it. I love that you are a civil libertarian and that you made me read treatises on it as well as taking a test to see if I was one: "Do you think the government should control alcohol and drugs?" "Do you think the government should control immigration?"

I love that you made me Hebrew flash cards and concocted an escape plan to Israel to be implemented if I lost the custody battle.

I love that you eat whole food and get drunk on two fuzzy navels.

I love that you correct my punctuation and know where the dashes and parentheses go as well as how many spaces to put between them.

I love that with you, in time we can do anything; make our dreams of home, family, friends, writing and saving the world come true.

I am proud to be with you and to be the mother of your son. It's OK that he looks and acts just like you.

I love that you "think green" and recycle despite my tendency to alarm the Recycling Police. I love that you chant "Use More Energy!" when my air conditioner is on.

I love that you know the words to "American Pie" (well, most of them) and when you don't know the words to songs, you make them up (as in the Macarena and La Cucaracha etc.).

I love that I can dance with you and spin and your moves are smooth and sure and it almost makes me look OK.

I love all your anecdotes about your life, some immortalized forever in your articles; some simple retold again and again, whenever anything remotely related comes up in our everyday life.

I love that you can row a boat, a canoe, or a kayak and that you don't try and scare me more when I am nervous about the boat going up and down.

I love that you build tree houses and secret passageways and climbing structures and that you carved the Cottontail family logo in the tree by the fountain across from the bus stop.

I love that the baby thinks of you as "bed". That you are willing to hold him all night and that you would never let him cry and that you call him "small dependent creature fully endowed with constitutional rights."

I love that you have the Constitution on your Powerbook lest you need to consult it at any time.

I love that we have all these rituals and traditions around here directly attributable to you, from teeth-brushing and splash-fests to frownie faces.

I love that you listen to NPR and subscribe to the National Times magazine that summarizes a whole month in one mag and that you were upset when its cover format changed and yet you don't know Margot Kidder from Nicole Kidman.

I love that your sport is frisbee.

I am proud of you for being responsible in taking a job that you don't love to help support our family. I know it was an enormous sacrifice and major lifestyle change. Thank you for being concerned about "good benefits" now and being a wonderful father and husband. I hope soon you can go back to doing something you love and consider meaningful.

You are very special, Jesse G (I love that you wrote a rap song; " Why is your name in it?" asks a bewildered Coco.)

I love that you drink Similac Sombreros. "Bartender, I want a stiff drink. Make me an Enfamil White Russian".

I love that when I make a mistake on the computer, I hear Sammy's bark and when I go off the end of a document I hear simultaneous orgasms.

I love that you hang the sheets and towels up with clothespins in the backyard to dry because smells are very important to you, from the smell of the wind-filled sheets to freshly cut wood to stopping and smelling the flowers.

I love that you step back and admire your handiwork.

I love that you cook things with the kids from witches' brew to pies to bread.

I love that when you are going to the subway, you leave Cottontail Hollow via the treehouse and the swamp.

I love the way people with perfect hair and make up stare at you in that familiar uncomprehending way.

I love that your birthday adds up to nine.

I love that you can pack to go somewhere in minutes. Clothes are fungible to you.

I love that you need me and I will try and be there more for you. All the time, anytime.

I love watching you m.c. streetcheckers with the neighborhood urchins until the daylight hours are gone. I love that you typed me a multi-colored version of the rules.

I feel for the first time that I have a home and family.

I love you. Happy Birthday, Jesse.