I've been racking my brains trying to find a gift to send to Huntington. As in Sharp. As in Red Room. I really want to. He has been good to me. Tolerated tons of emails, questions, moods, discontent, happiness, in fact years really of ups and downs and in-betweens.

And it's not easy finding a gift for someone you admire but never met. I thought about coasters first. I looked all over for them. I wanted coasters with Irish writers imprinted on them. So Huntington could place his scotch on Yeats or Wilde, contemplate Beckett, muse on the wild Irish poets, think of peat or wild berries as he pens another brilliant idea. Then I thought ties. Tweed. Too personal. No. A cap. How big is his head? Would he wear it? I suppose I could choose pottery. Smoked Salmon. Linen. A book on Irish literature but then again he probably has some amazing edition tucked away on his bookshelf. Limited. Signed. I struggled on. I ambled in and out of shops. Looking. Nothing spoke of the man. So to date I have found nothing. But I will. I am sure of that. This man deserves it.

And today is my birthday which makes it insane to be out shopping for gifts. I had plenty. Small things really. Our trip to Spain is in the offing. A little delayed due to H's commitments but still viable. I dance along this day. Not sure if I like to grow old feeling too young still, catching myself at how I see age and if I should be wearing sensible lady shoes and not putting those crazy earrings into my lobes and instead paying heed to age. Age is horrible. I hate growing old. I want to stay young.

I counted seagulls driving home from shopping for Huntington. Well, I tried to count them but it was impossible. I just settled on the way they swooped around, diving and soaring in apparent unison. Grey and white and elegant. I was at the traffic lights, eager to be home to cake and wine and tiny wrapped gifts that I did not want to open. How special one feels on a birthday. Like the world stops. Like you glide. Along. A seagull diving up and just as easily falling down only to scoop up again into the sky. I crave for that. A loosening up of my wings. A spreading out to encompass the world, the man across the sea whom I will never meet and yet go shopping for. The woman at the stop light with worry in her eyes as if she will never get home, as if she has no home to go to. Birthdays are great but they are a little irrelevant now, as if time owes me nothing only to discover I owe it everything. Everything that ever made me.