Beautiful Girl and the Luckiest Young Man I KnowI used to write poetry, and so I wrote Marissa poetry. I started writing short stories and so I wrote short stories based on events surrounding Marissa and I.Well lately I've been writing blog posts. If you haven't guessed, Marissa is the girl in this picture, and the putative ladyfriend in several blog posts.

How does one pay adequate birthday tribute to a girl like Marissa? What do you do for a young woman who not only puts up with your elocutions about "Anarcho-Tyranny" from the passenger side of her Honda - but also has the decency not to encourage more of them? What is a blog post to one who regularly gives you things of incalculable value- surprise grilled cheese sandwiches or the ability to laugh at yourself.

What do you do for someone who surprises you on your birthday (during her busy season at accounting) with pancakes in bed - at 6:30 am - before what will surely be a 12-15 hour workday? What do you do for someone who you took to concerts of your favorite band - who you pined for during her Senior prom - and who became your date for yours. She puts up with your politics, she thinks Tom Cruise is hideous, she encourages your strange adoration of Rachel McAdams, she loves your writing, she puts up with you flirtier, drunker blog-alter-ego. She cheers you on and makes a giant banner for when you take your LSAT (which you didn't excel at in the end anyway). She starts to cheer for the Mets and knows who David Wright is. She's heard all your stories before and only lets you retell them if they are good stories. (Like the story about when I got kissed in the bank by a former teacher) She shows up at your secret "thing" in Manhattan with your new political/writing friends and buddies and she looks ravishing - and makes you look better too. She cheers you on in the game of beer pong at the random party the devout Catholic friend of a friend brings you too - which will result in the most killer hangover since the time you drowned in tequila the night before New Years Eve.

She cuts your hair when you are in your poorest, most disorganized early days of college. Her civility dulls the sharpness and angularity (to put it mildly) of your table conversation. Her charm and her blue eyes summon you to perform the common deeds of chivalry that make a young man worthy of the name "young man". She thinks you look better with a book or journal in your hands than with a bag of snacks and a 17'' monitor staring back at you- and you start reading more. She teaches you to love strawberries (which your grandmother loved) and teaches you to love strawberry stained fingers (which your grandfather must have loved). In short - her beauty and grace makes you a better man. It is a cliche and it is the "job" of all women to improve the men in their lives - but it is not a job a good woman has to labor to accomplish - a good woman accomplishes it as the natural result of her goodness. St. Paul talks about it, if I remember.

And even though this entire post sounds like it was written for everyone- for all my regular readers - it is really for her because I want to wish her a Happy Birthday while she is stuck at an office, at work at a job for which she is underpaid - and it didn't' sound like she was going to have alot of fun getting a year older in an office and she needs to know that no matter how many posts I crank out this week on immigration, antiwar protesters, or fashion sense - that I'm always just waiting for her - and that anything shared with her is that much sweeter - whether news of a book review being accepted by some semi-obscure website -or I'm watching David Wright as he adds 2 more RBIs to his sterling record - or I become some wildly successful lawyer. All of it is better knowing that at the end of the night there is a good chance I'll get to run my fingers through her hair until she falls asleep - and I'll sneak away and drive back home - with all my senses full of Marissa.

Happy Birthday!