Bon anniversaire.

Four years ago today, while working on the Lewis Brown Farm amongst the cherries, I gave an adorable, floppy-hat-wearing, tractor-driving farm boy (who I didn't know at all) a mix CD featuring old Modest Mouse, The Shins, The Magnetic Fields, Sparklehorse, Paul Simon, Ben Folds, My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists (oh God, I know), The Kinks, Wilco, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and--yes--my phone number, hastily scrawled in permanent pen before I could lose my courage and leave it out.
It was the most daring thing I've ever done. Something about the floppy-hat boy compelled me to undertake this unabashedly crazy act--it was an instinctive feeling I'd gotten when I first saw him. I immediately knew we fit together somehow; there was a strong magnetic pull of an interaction that needed to unfold, and I wasn't sure what it would lead toward--but it seemed necessary to find out.

My boss, Annie, with a twinkle in her eye, gave me an excuse to return some tools to the farm boy so I could deliver my mix to him somewhat discreetly, although in retrospect I'm fairly certain the entire farm crew knew I fancied him. I handed the harvest boxes over to him with the mix on top, and tried to look nonchalant as I gave a wave and drove away up the dusty gravel road. Victory was mine. I'm certain that, at that very moment, millions of shy sisters worldwide lit candles in honor of my well-executed daring deed.

Unbelievably, the farm boy called me right after work, and that evening we went to the Beanery on 2nd Street in Corvallis: our first date. We were so awkward. He talked obsessively about politics, and I talked obsessively about music; he rambled about backpacking through Tasmania with his best friend, and I blathered on about art, because the only places I'd really been were those I'd painted on canvas and envisioned in books. We were really dissimilar, but in our time together we reveled and grew individually in the eclecticism of our relationship (and we still do). We had only a left month together until he needed to move to Montana, and we milked it for all it was worth, swimming at the river and wandering up the beach, buying goodies at the co-op, making picnic lunches.
Five months after he left for Missoula--after literally hundreds of dollars spent on phone cards and hundreds of hours spent talking over hundreds of miles--I moved to Missoula to go to school with him, and we had an epic adventure together so far away from everything we knew.
Four years later, we've certainly had our growing pains and moments of chaos and distance and idiocy (mostly on my part; refer to last December for details, or please don't). We even survived my year of super-intensive graduate school, which I watched systematically eliminate the relationships of nearly everybody around me over a span of 12 months. We made it, my farmboy and I. It's hardly believable that one little mix kicked off the soundtrack to this entire adventure, but it did--and it's kept rolling with great resilience and beauty despite enormous obstacles. I'm so grateful to be with him.

My farmboy is in Alaska commercial fishing tonight, and he'll be gone for another three weeks. But this evening I'll raise my Beanery iced coffee to him from a thousand miles away, put on my dress (the only one I own, bought today because I know he'll like it), and dance by myself to a new mix tape: one we've made together from the songs that have accompanied us through our grab-bag of shared experiences.

I'll bet that if you open your windows, you can listen too.

To Andy Livesay, with love.