“My day was already placed in the ‘good hair’ category. I use that term not so much to specify how I look, more so, how I feel. I felt happy, pretty, and abundant. An unusual sense of abundance was over me. I liked it.
I’d met a guy a few months before and we hit it off. He was dreamy and smart. He also made me snort-laugh and battled me (and occasionally won) at reciting rap lyrics.
That day we met for lunch. He ordered in and we ate at his office. I could eat as little or as much as I wanted and it felt exactly like what I would do if no one was watching. He was never ‘watching’ me.
He always made me feel like he was thrilled that the air surrounding him was infused with me.
During lunch, he told me his sisters were planning a surprise birthday party for him. Couldn’t be a full-on surprise because they needed some input on special guests they may not know to invite. He only knew there would be a party, but not when or where it would be. He thought they’d be sneaky enough to plan it right under his nose and have it at his place. Assured me I’d be given strict instructions about keeping the secret details from him.
‘Don’t be surprised if they include a non-disclosure agreement,’ he said.
He needed my address and added if I didn’t want to disclose that yet, he would simply pass along my cell number and/or email address to his sisters. I gave him my home address. None of my paranoia flared up when the idea of giving him this information went through my brain. I felt calm and secure. This is not my normal state of being. I’m almost always waiting for the other shoe to drop. For that terrible thing to happen. I can be super paranoid. It was so pleasant to not have that feeling exist in that moment.
That very evening, just as I arrived home, there was a delivery for me of beautiful fresh flowers and chocolates. They were from him.
No invitation.
I thought perhaps he made up the story about the party in order to get my address and be able to start ‘moving in’ closer and deeper into my world. Paused to take in my thoughts and was again pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t immediately going to a dark place with not so great thoughts.
I called and thanked him for the gift. I didn’t mention the party again since I believed it was not a thing.
Four days later, I received the invitation from his sisters and only one weekend later, went to what looked like a wedding reception, catering hall and all.
It was actually a 40th birthday party for the most sincere man I’ve ever met. People gave speeches. There was a photo slide show, a cake, a DJ, and a band. There were so many people there, friends, family members, and even his nanny, the woman who came to live with his father and uncle to help them raise all those kids. The sparkle in their eyes as they embraced and looked at each other was magic.
His mother and two of his other aunts died in a car accident on his eighth birthday. It left two men, two brothers, as widowers with five children under 15 years old between them. They all moved into one house. He was exactly the middle child of five kids.
He hadn’t celebrated a birthday since. He sat in front of a cake each year and listened to his sisters, father, uncle, cousins (more like brothers now) and nanny sing the birthday song to him but he never ‘celebrated’ the day. According to him as of age nine, it was the day his mother died and nothing to celebrate. His sisters convinced him at 40 should be the year he let it go and begin to celebrate the day he was born and not mourn the day she died.
There were teary moments. A video of him and his mother together was displayed, with recordings of her voice in the background. There was so much love on his birthday as he deserved it.
Could you believe THAT guy sent me flowers, chocolate, and wrote a cutesy love note that arrived at my home hours after I gave him my address?
I’m lucky in love. Sometimes I’m reminded of that by a delivery guy with a package from a lovely man.”
