History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction.

My best friend's birthday is today. Oddly enough, we are often apart on our respective birthdays; only rarely have we celebrated together. A phone call across the miles, the overheard background murmer of other people's fetes, the Birthday Song and giggles on voicemail - such are our traditions. This year the miles are slightly more in number.

When she turned twenty-one, she was in school in Massachusetts; I called from my porch swing on a balmy not-quite-autumn evening in Tennessee, one bare foot tucked under my thigh and the other resting on my dog, the hand not holding the phone wrapped around a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. She was in Amherst drinking red wine, freezing in boots and a turtleneck sweater because it was her birthday, and she insisted on wearing a skirt. That's my girl.

Hey, Reethie!
Hey, Boo. If you were here I would ...
I know. Me, too.
I know.

I dislike the Birthday Song, as it happens. It's the same as the disdain for cartoons and chocolat chaud, although it takes on a peculiar venom when situated in a public place, magnified tenfold when sung by waiters. I don't understand why the tune has to be the same in all languages, either. I bet in Micronesia, they have the same damn song, and I don't even know what language they speak there.

(My poor children. No cartoons, no chocolat chaud, no birthday song. This is why they'll always be hypothetical children. During a long van ride on a recent educational excursion, my friends here made up - and loudly sang - a song using the imagined names of my hypothetical children. I suppose that's as good an illustration as any of how tired we get of speaking French.)

The only time I like the Birthday Song, in fact, is when Morgan sings it on my voicemail. She always calls, always sings, no matter where she is, even if she has to sing into the phone in public. Happy BIRTHday, dear Reethie ... I never wonder if it's coming, because it's there, every time. I hear Dear Reethie once a year because she loves me all the other days, too.

Hey, Boo. If you were here I'd bake you un bon gateau. Take you dancing. Buy you a glace at Cornet-sodding-d'Amour.

If I was there I'd take you to the Deli (which you always write as 'the Delhi,' and it always makes me smile, every time), to Boscos, to Le Chardonnay, where we've still never gone together but always talk about. To the Flying Saucer, to Swig, to Do.

I'd buy you a seven-dollar mojito at the Beauty Shop.

I'd make you a chocolate martini.

If we were together we'd eat samosas and bengan bhartha, as spicy as they'd make it, and drink Morgan Pinot.

Late at night we'd sing without shame to the Phish that WE put on the jukebox at Printer's.

We'd sit on the patio and smoke.
Pass a clove between us.
Break into the Eagles.

Watch the sun come up.

If you were here or I was there I would ...
We would ...

You know.

Hey, Boo. I love you, and I'm so glad you're my Dear Morgan every single day of the year, and I'm so glad I've got today to tell you.

Happy Birthday, from France this time. Next year, Jerusalem.

Or maybe just home.