Fifteenth Birthday

When I turned forty, my wife and my mother conspired to throw me a big birthday party at Scrooges. My mother knew why I hadn’t celebrated birthdays since my fourteenth, but my wife did not.

That’s probably to my shame. I owed her an explanation. In my defense, my marriage was 85% her ghosts, 14% she was extraordinarily naked, and 1% my ghosts. My ghosts don’t end with Katie, but they begin there. Her name wasn’t even Katie.

This weekend, I will celebrate my fifteenth birthday, a do-over, with Little Bird and her Mom. You don’t get to know too much about my friendship with her mom. I can tell you that she was my very first friend who was my own age, even though she’s technically a year younger. She said “hi.”

“Wait, you mean me? Oh. Hi. I’m B, b, b, b, b,b, I’m Boyd.”

The stutter got better.

My friendship with Little Bird’s Little Momma has never been the traditional “Boyd meets girl. Boyd saves girl. Boyd loses girl.” Scenario. She’s my mentor and my guide; she makes me stronger than I was. Recently, I began calling her my navigator. I’m not entirely sure I’m ready or qualified to skipper the vessel, but I’m not doing it without her as navigator.

Don’t you think Little Bird is an ideal first mate?

Don’t tell me happy birthday, or ask me how it went. I would let these women perform surgery on me. It’ll be fine.