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2007-02-18 - 11:00 p.m. ..the voice of the past.... This evening when we came home from dinner there was a message on our old answering machine. The tape appears to broken so that the message was not recorded. Instead I played back four messages left for me on my birthday back in 1995. One was from a friend who was going to take me out for dinner. She sang a full and beautiful chorus of Happy Birthday. Another message was from a credit card company representative - who also, surprisingly, began his message with "Happy Birthday." The third message was the rather chilly voice of my now-ex boyfriend, the banjo-playing cowboy. It was a perfunctory "Happy Birthday" followed by flight information for his return flight from the UK, on Virgin Atlantic. But the eeriest message - and the one with which the tape began - was the voice of my father and my baby half-brother singing Happy Birthday to me. He ended the way he always ended Happy Birthday: "Ba Ba Ba Ba BAAAAAAAAAA BUMP." My father has been dead for almost ten years. I had to use the table to support myself for a few seconds as I listened to him singing. I took the tape out of the machine, and put it in the drawer. I'd nearly forgotten how his voice sounds. leave a note
...they are just words, Suzi... - 2011-08-29
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