Happy 56th Birthday, Amiga

For a few months, until I turn 57 in December, we are the same age. Muff used to laugh and say "You blaze the trail into next year, and I'll follow." I am doing my best to not forget anything about her, including her love of Irish music, and Gordon Lightfoot, and Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollop, Trinity by Leon Uris, Nick Adams Stories by Hemingway, Charles Dickens and Rumpole of the Bailey. She had no time for most "contemporary" popular fiction or music. She and I and Mary Karl formed a group in reaction to the invasiveness of popular culture called The Sea Hags. We had rules, regs and policies, too, and we'd cackle at those who fell prey to the easy slang and stupidity of what we saw as the cheap fast food of pop music and fiction. How I miss your wit and sarcasm, my fellow Sea Hag! I miss listening to your Gord's Gold album, and the Irish Rovers, and your loathing of all pasta. 
Today I am listening to Gordon Lightfoot in your honor. I am reading a memoir by an African American woman (you would have loved Shonda Rhimes, Muff) and I am eating potatoes for lunch (You loved potatoes almost as much as you hated macaroni). You were a true Gemini. Mercurial, intellectual, witty and wise. You never quite got the hang of romantic relationships, unfortunately, but I don't think you had a lot of role models in that respect. We both certainly had the dreaded "daddy issues," and I know that you and I struggled with self esteem at many points during our lives, battling feelings of worthlessness due in no small part to body size issues. Men were still drawn to you, though, in a way that they were never drawn to me, even at my thinnest. Your spark always shone so bright, a blind man could see it. 
To this day, I wish I had your brilliant mind, which made reading even the most complex texts seem like child's play. You're the only person I'd ever met who thought Thackeray was easy reading, a sort of dilettante of 19th century English literature. I barely made it through Vanity Fair with my brain intact.  One of the few things you didn't understand was science. I remember tutoring you in the basic biology class that we had freshman year at Clarke, and none of it made sense to you, so we tried going through it as if it were a novel, with a plot, and characters and the body being the setting. You made it through and returned the favor many times over the years, especially in the women's lit class that we had where we were supposed to read every feminist writer ever and journal about how that author impacted our life or our outlook/understanding of life. I was taking too many hours of classes, and I was unable to spend time reading so many thick tomes, so you loaned me your notes and we talked about Simone De Bouvoir and Tillie Olsen and Mary Daley.  You had 'voices' you'd made up for each of them, and we roared with laughter at the scenarios you'd make up about these long-dead women having tea, or drinking wine in Paris and tossing their lovers out on the street. 
I remember your tiny feet, and the fact that you insisted on wearing really cheap keds sneakers that would fall apart about a month after you got them, but you'd tape them up and wear them anyway. I tried to get you to wear boots, or sturdy shoes, but you refused, just as you refused to wear a coat, even in winter. You loved Irish whiskey, you hated the pretentiousness of wine and you thought beer was for bores. That didn't stop you and Monica from getting me drunk for the first time in my life on beer in the "onion" at Clarke freshman year, however. I gather I was quite entertaining. I don't remember a thing about that night after chugging that first pint.
I remember your "tin ear" and your gravely laugh. Your compassion for those less fortunate lead you to help and volunteer in so many ways. Your love of children that lead you to adopt a child in Africa and send a small amount of money every month to her until she was 18. For her 18th birthday, I remember how proud you were to send her some simple kitchen appliances and a bucket and washbasin, which she wrote to tell you were so very important for her to be able to cook her own food and clean up afterwards. You adopted an entire platoon of soldiers after 9/11, and you sent them individual letters every week. You read to the kids at the library, something that you loved doing so much it filled my heart to hear you exult about it. You volunteered at your local church, the one that you felt was for 'regular' people, not snobs, and you went to mass regularly, always saying a prayer for me and mine, though you didn't like to talk about it.  I still miss you, and I will always love you. Happy birthday in heaven.