Moments from Emma’s Birthday

I wrote and performed this live reading during Emma’s 25th birthday on July 27. It has been sitting in my drafts too long!!

Burning feet.

Eggs.

Yogurt.

Mini bagels.

That’s the calling of our morning fuel. Justin won’t be awake for hours. Maura will clean up until it’s sparkling clean and Connor will play YouTube videos very loud. Susan will make breakfast for two. Hannah and Garvey will already be in the kitchen. Harper and Melanie still asleep. Johnny and Jack bring the vibes in their wahoo swag. Ben will inject inappropriate jokes into the air about sailboats. Eleanor pioneers behind the stove. Meghan’s here…& now the Nespresso is at the ready. Breakfast sausage smoke fills the air with the ghastly scent of necessary recovery. We sit around the kitchen table, heads hanging like ripe grapes off the vine. Nearly falling off. Why must we ask questions that make us drink until we see nothing? Kaylie yells advil and Aidan’s mullet bewitches the breakfast table after both of their barefoot journeys from the Bayhouse has worsened their pulsing migraines. Laughter drunkens our sober hungover spirits. Just as we laugh away our headaches from a highly spirited evening of too many spirits, our rude and rather sober awakening bewitches our shaking hands and incomprehension. Emma, Scott, and Lauren return from a 15-mile run. The room is still with intensity. Impressive does not come near to express the sheer pride we hold for our friends. A feeling that carries us through. Slowly the stack of beach towels diminishes to zero. And we jump into the waves as a game of marco polo makes us laugh until we drown in spitting laughter. That is until the crawl of a sea louse settlement chases us out of the water with pure chaos. A game of musical towels, trivia, and chugging a mystery liquid behooves us to keep our creativity. Emma makes a speech and Scott shifts our tear duct gears into overdrive. We never stop growing. This is why we celebrate Emma, to celebrate her great passion for bringing us together each year, each moment, each second, year after year. All we want to be proud of one day, one job promotion, one sentence, one moment to bring us here to this domain of magic and games to pretend we are still children which we are. Talks of engagement. We are so excited for our future. We cannot wait to grow old. We cannot wait for a million more celebrations of Emma, in this house and many more.