I’ve missed posting a few birthdays, but in a moment of efficiency, I am posting about Mimi on her actual birthday! She had a ballroom dance rehearsal tonight so we aren’t officially celebrating until tomorrow, but that didn’t stop us from having her birthday cereal for breakfast and a favorite dinner with brownies for dessert. Tomorrow we’ll have her real birthday dinner including grilled Cornell chicken and homemade German Chocolate Cake.

In honor of Mimi, I would like to share a poem that she wrote last year:

Burial Caves

-Sulawesi, Indonesia, 1975

The wooden caskets,

built to rock like cradles,

lay scattered around the dim tunnel,

too small for anyone but a child.

Some of them were broken open—

tiny femur, humerus, skulls

lying on the rocks inside the cave

near empty copper boxes

the size of a baby’s rattle,

spilled by centuries

of the earth’s plates shifting.

My father, eleven years old,

turned a burnished bronze

by the tropical sun,

scrubbed at the goose bumps

on his arms and picked up

one of the boxes, twirling

it between his fingers

like an empty film canister,

its dull sheen reflecting

civilizations in his eyes.

He will grow up, move back

to the States when his father’s bones

become too stiff for the rigors

of overseas construction.

The faraway, tropical homes

of my father’s childhood

will fade as he packs

all of his memories

into an iron-bound sea chest,

forgotten.

Perhaps he will remember

the chest, scoop out his stories,

pressed down, shaken together

and running over,

pouring them into my hands.

MK 2007

Yesterday we celebrated C.’s fifth birthday. We shared it with cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and even a new puppy. She loved every minute of it, especially when her uncle played Happy Birthday to her on his trombone.

~Lisa