Gifts

I turned 21 yesterday.
Yes, I wen to a bar and had a drink. No, it was not the most monumentous occassion of my life, though it will make life easier from now on.
The birthday itself was sort of tough, for alot of reasons not worth going into. Tough with acquaintances, parents, and Boy, and the varying plans/lackofplans/expectations all of them and I had about what my birthday should be left me stressed out for parts of it.
But then I walked into the bedroom to get changed and found a beautiful hank of rope and a note, lying on the bed.
Boy is working on rope now. He ordered raw hemp, and has been going though the many steps that turn raw hemp into lovely soft rope you want to wrap around your skin.
He gave me a beatiful piece of the first rope he treated, because it was the first and because he loves me and because everyone needs some rope sometimes whether they're kinky or no.
Last year, not on my birthday but when he could, he gave me another thing he made me, a small turned brass piece of functional art that I've cherished ever since.
I love the gifts he makes me more than anything he could buy, and he's so skilled that they're fabulous.
And I realized after all this birthday fuss that I don't remember what I did for him last year for his birthday, if anything. Or what I gave him. Or what I could make to give to him, since he makes such lovely things for me.
So what do I make? I make words, I make food, I make people feel better.
I am not so advanced a chef that I could invent a recipe, really, but everything I cook I cook with him in mind. I know which flavors he likes and which he doesn't, and the only recipe I call my own was made out of two parts, and he was one. It's a pasta recipe with egg and cheese, because I cooked all one year for two friends, a crazy-beautiful vegetarian artist girl and a distant, lovely boy who made my heart ache and insisted that a meal wasn't a meal without protien.
Food, and words.
I write in this blog more often than any other forum, and this blog is for him. It's for me, as well, and for you who read it, but in the end, it's for him. The name I use to sign onto it is Switch.and.Boy. It's us. So this is my gift to him. For his birthdays that I missed and the birthdays to come and for everyday in between.
Food, words, and making people feel better.
Which is easier with people who don't make my throat constrict and my heart beat faster every time they frown. It's alot easier to make people feel better when they don't make up the better part of your world, but I want Boy to know that I will keep every secret he's ever told me, and hold him when he's small and needs to be held, and I will talk to him till too late at night and make him whatever foods will cheer him and help him through whatever work is making his life hard. I have been imperfect at this, and I'm sure I'll stay that way, but I'm going to try.
And that's a promise, come what may. Forever. No matter what we are to eachother, I'll be what I can to him.

So that's the schlocky writings of a girl who doesn't make anythign permanent to a boy who gives her the objects of love. Words, food and feelings. They won't tie up your bottom or sit on your dresser, but they're what I can give and I will.