Tally me bananas

Yesterday, when I was sitting in the comfy chair, reading, Russell walked up to me, handed me his half eaten and quite mushy banana and said "Happy birday to you."



Yesterday was not my birthday but Russell recently attended his cousin Olivia's third birthday party and ever since then he's developed the habit of handing people random objects and wishing them a happy birthday or birday, as he likes to say. And you know, even if it's just a sock or a little lego head or even a mushy banana, there's something nice about a grimy, little baby boy face smiling at you, telling you it's your birthday and handing you a present straight from his chubby little heart.

Of all the gifts I've been showered with in the last few days, the mushy banana stands out. It reminds me of the first birthday present that Kurtis ever gave me. We were newly dating and the relationship was still full of all of that heightened significance and pressure. Birthday gifts are hard for at least the first five years of any relationship and the first birthday is absolutely the worst. You have to find something that communicates the right message. You want something that says "I listen and I know what you need." But it can't be a personal organizer, no matter how much that might be needed. The gift has to say "I want to have fun with you" without being leather lingerie or a whip. Really, it's all so complicated it makes you feel like giving up...which, I'm pretty sure, is exactly what Kurtis did. Because he bought me a banana for my birthday.

Yes. A banana. And, although it was early in our relationship, it wasn't that early. We were clearly in a relationship. There was no excuse for the banana. He claims that it was because I used to say that I didn't like bananas because I'd never had a perfect banana. The bananas I'd eaten had always been slightly mushy or brown or, conversely, too green and kind of hard. So, he saw a perfect banana and thought that that would make a wonderful gift. Of course, by the time he gave it to me, he'd been carrying it around in his back-pack for a while and it was quite brown and covered in bruises...ahh, the romance.

Since then, Kurtis has made up for his little lapse in judgment by giving me a lot of wonderful things. He's given me a lens for my camera, a guitar, long birthday hikes, perfect cakes and other amazing gifts that have shown me how well he knows me and how much he cares. But I have never let him live down that banana. Especially because his first birthday present from me was a book by one of his favourite writers and a blue marble, referencing a favourite poem of mine. Inside the book was a bookmark that I had lovingly made. The bookmark had a funny and touching quote on it, a quote that Kurtis and I had discovered, a few months before, hanging, framed, on the wall of dry cleaners while walking around in downtown Toronto.

Kurtis still has the bookmark and the book and the marble. I didn't even eat the banana. Don't judge me. You wouldn't have eaten it either. It was gross.