Happy Birthday, Nikki

I liked the patches on the back of your jeans, and almost before I knew it, we were together. That was 1971. November 10 still never passes without my remembering it's your birthday even though at the time I thought I might be just in it for the lust that was driving me crazy; even though I was on anti-depressants; even though walking to the bank in South Bend in the winter sun the morning after our first night, I realized I had no idea how to live. I have the picture of you and your 2 year-old cherub, lovely madonna and child, he's almost middle-aged now. Gifts you gave me still endure, even material ones, the Judy Collins Songbook and the antique candle-holder Mom has. Saw you in the early '90s driving through there, we met for breakfast, you looked great. I wrote you afterward, you never replied, but at least you knew how I felt. That night in San Mateo when I made you get out to catch your plane, of course I didn't want to do it. Took me a year and a half to come out of the depression after stopping the pills because on them I felt I couldn't really be there for you. If I'd been a lot more myself, who knows? But every year like clockwork, November 10, I remember.