Here's to long hair in the summer.

The Toast, by me

A toast: to the written word and not being able to wait any longer.

Here's to orange peels and coffee cups and what it felt like when I met you.

Here's to what you look like on the weekends, to Thursdays, to July.

Here's to long hair in the summer, to not hating Mondays, to the Sunday funnies,

to slam poetry, to independent films and to crying in public.

Here's to rock music -- and The Beatles and Elvis, who engineered that,

and to keeping it alive.

Here's to eminence and to ameliorating and to ski trips.

Here's to cat people and dog people and bird people,

to afternoon tea, to kissing, and to rain.

Here's to waking up and realizing that the road construction is finished.

Here's to the way you smell, to how that's home, 

to the way my dad mumbles "I love you" when he's sleeping,

to the way no one could understand what he's saying -- "I love you" -- except me,

and to the way my mom never forgets to say that -- "I love you" -- even when she's mad.

Here's to great music and big feet and sand, 

and here's to cheap Chinese food.

Here's to paper chains that count down the days until summer,

and here's to electric violins, and here's to ice cream,

and here's to best friends.

Here's to the Italian Renaissance and the Harlem Renaissance and change, dang it,

here's to change. 

Here's to good hair days, to fortune cookies, to impossible dreams.

Here's to waking up from nightmares, to the horse books you read in elementary school,

to boys with great hair and girls with great freckles,

Here's to being honest.

Here's to emotional healing.

Here's to saying "thank you, but no" when you don't want to.

Here's to falling in love, to cliff-jumping, to dirt-poor poets.

Here's to alliteration, to antithesis, to repetition, to rhetoric, and here's to the plain old alphabet.

Here's to cliches, to Emily Dickinson, to Sylvia Plath, 

and here's to every brilliant thing Ms. Plath did before she stuck her head in that oven

(such a shame, really).

Here's to jogging, and here's to cake, to Gothic cathedrals.

Here's to double-stuffed oreos and copyright laws and to half birthdays.

Here's to the things you weren't going to do, but you did, didn't you? 

And here's to being glad you did.

Here's to mail and boys with high IQs and flapper girls and history teachers and acing tests, to sleeping in, to Cliffnotes, to Kevin Bacon, to all that phenomena, to linguistics and architecture, here's to brand new babies named after your sister.

Here's to a marvelous God, a good God, a generous God, a forgiving God --

and here's to you.

From me.

Let's hear it, people.

Lucky # 16, 9, 13, 31, 27, 01

All my love,

Addy