Katie, I meant for these to be a single post, but you and I are never short on words. Never short on symbolism. Never short on this means this thing, but also this thing, and this thing, and probably this thing too. You are never short on magic, and mystery, and so I give you, on your birthday, two posts. xx.
A Heavy Wait friend
Not all friendships begin with history or proximity.
Some begin where the air feels thin,
and the heart is forced to learn a new language.
That’s where I found you, in the Heavy Wait—
in a season when life becomes metaphors
about kitchen floors and dark rooms with baseball bats.
Your soul, uncannily familiar,
as if our kids’ roads crossed long before we met,
as if the universe whispered, “You two—for a time such as this.”
Now, on this side of survival,
you remind me that the work
is simply to chop wood and carry water.
A friendship that reaches for me
in moments where words don’t know where to land.
You honor grief’s aftershocks
and never ask whether we should be “over it.”
You are always looking for the nuanced magic of survival,
even as the calendar insists on marching forward—
a reminder that the world still spins.
So on your birthday,
as we step into another turn around the sun,
you’ve made it impossible to say,
“No one gets it.”
You’ve turned the mucky mess of survival guilt
into a healing instinct to reach for each other.
The world is better—gentler—because you reach for me.
Happy Birthday, Katie.
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