9/21/10
Gabriel,
For your birthday present, I’d like to share what it is that I love most about you. It can be illustrated by the following account of my favorite memory of you and I:
.…….
Picture an afternoon in late June, early July, the sun warm but not sweltering yet, with the two of us walking down a quiet lane, chatting. We reach a tree at the end of the block and lay in its shade on our backs, looking at the leaves and the sky, conversing the mysteries of God. I roll over onto my stomach. You follow suit.
And then…
…you pick a blade of grass…
…hold it between both hands to your mouth…
…and make a whistle.
At that moment, I am transported to my childhood, watching my father with wide, enchanted eyes as he makes his own grass whistle. I never learned how to do that, and the wonder I felt as a child revisits me then as an adult. Lying next to you, remembering the magical pleasures of my youth, I can’t help but smile at the thought of my own son, his eyes like saucers, marveling at his first view of the simple instrument, and ask myself who it is that will teach him how to make his own? I can picture his toothy grin, taking up all of his face, when he finally manages to produce a sound from the blade, presumably after extensive puffing.
……….
I don’t know how else to describe what I love most about you except to say that you somehow carry the innocence of childhood within you. The grass whistle, the flux capacitor and rocket jets for your car, the model airplanes, the cats you teach to fetch, the daring mountain bike adventures, the radio built from spare electronics… these are all dreams from our earlier years. Most of us relinquish them eventually, but they are alive in you.
Tell me, dear friend, what sort of person do our dreams entrust themselves with? It takes a rare soul, indeed, with an understanding of their sacredness, purity, and vital importance, to ensure their safety – for dreams are fragile things – often broken, bruised, mocked, and cast aside as meaningless wastes of time. They must be handled with the utmost care, gentleness – and steadily receive nourishment in the form of hope, compassion, and genius – to survive.
Keep them carefully protected, Gabriel. If not for you, then for the rest of us. We need our dreams – and we are lost without our most precious and vigilant Dreamkeepers.
Happy Birthday.
Violet
(I made a CD of this song and tucked the letter inside the CD case.)
