#melissabdayweek

Melissa McBride Birthday Week Day 7 
FREESTYLE  Happy 51st Birthday, Melissa McBride! (May 23, 2016)

Oh wow. I was in the mood to finally try out my gouache paints tonight and I just wanted something simple to do so I thought a cup of coffee would be fun. 

It turned out latte froth and the reflections in a spoon are far from simple with a new art medium, however, and it was not going well. And then all of a sudden, just as I was hating how the the froth art had turned out I went to write the date on it and I realized that I had been painting a cup of coffee on Melissa’s birthday. (Which makes me wish even more that it had turned out better but makes me feel happy about it anyway.)

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MELISSA!!! May the coffee fairies be good to you!

Melissa McBride Birthday Week  Day 6   [Favorite friendship OR TWD Cast Love]

Okay so, I’m well aware that I’m hopeless and a day late and all that, but I want to put this up anyway, given that life has very much gotten in the way of me being able to participate in this week in the way I would have liked to. I’ve been fortunate enough to speak with Melissa several times at the two Atlanta Walker Stalkers I’ve been to (if you wanna read ludicrously exhaustive accounts of those cons, you can do so for 2014 here and for 2015 here). 

Every single time I try to speak to Melissa I fall apart inside. The degree to which I fall apart outside varies, from barely holding it together the first time to being more or less coherent the last time I spoke with her this past November.

So there are a gajillion small things I could mention, because honestly I don’t have within me the words to express what a gift it is to meet her in person -- how warm, funny, loving, empathetic, self-deprecating, insightful, caring, and stunningly gorgeous she is. 

I could talk about how the mention of the way in which I use Carol to talk to my kids about representation made her tear up instantly, about how she somehow knew who I was without ever having seen a picture of me online, about the fact that she came around the damn table to hug @alannastara and calm her down the very first time we were going through line in 2014, about the way she noticed and commented on the shirts I was wearing both days at the 2015 con (one was @vcanizal2‘s amazing geometric Carol and the other one was the berry S4 Henley), or about how she just has this gift for calming even people like me down (and anybody who has met me can corroborate the fact that I quite literally talk 200 miles a minute -- I have no clue how anybody ever understands me when I’m excited).

But I want to say just one thing about the gift I gave her at WS Atlanta this past October, which was a framed copy of this drawing by S. Because here’s the thing. Yes, S is a good artist for a (then) 12-year-old. But Melissa is routinely given art by the best people in the fandom, so his little picture was certainly nothing impressive for her to see in comparison with the spectrum of beauty that other people create for her on the daily. And yet omg, from the second I handed it to her, she was 100% looking at every aspect of the picture, making little comments about details like the shoes and the clothes and the hair. My point is that she could have just smiled, said “thank you,” and handed the picture to her assistant, but she absolutely took the time to focus completely on that tiny gift in that moment.

And I think that’s one of the reasons that meeting Melissa is something that holds such a special place in the hearts of all of us who have been fortunate enough to do so. For the time that you’re standing in front of her, she tunes out everything else in the world and gives you her undivided attention. She is genuinely interested in what you have to say. She’s truly appreciative of each word, each thought, each gift.