Birthday #32 and counting
Today is my 32nd birthday. Due to a variety of odd circumstances, not long ago I came back from dinner with my two year old son. Just he and I on a snowy, rainy ride into town to the one nice restaurant they have. I’m trying to decide if this is really pathetic or quite charming. I think it’s a little of both. We shared crab cakes and he picked all the candied pecans out of my spinach salad. He drank milk, not from a sippy cup. Twice he thanked the waiter when I forgot. About half way through dinner he finished a swig of his milk and very business like set it two handed on the table. He leaned back in his chair, which meant he was basically lying down and said, “Oh Mama, I sure am glad we have such a nice baby.” Well I heartily agreed and we proceeded to have a five minute lovefest about how great Choco is and how much we love him and eachother and what a great big brother Cai is and he proceeded to tell me all the nice things he does for Choco and how he makes him laugh, etc.
On the way home I started to think about birthdays. When I was half this age, 16 years ago I was handed keys to a car the morning of my birthday, not too many months later I totaled it. One birthday I remember being drunk and crying in the stairwell of my best friends apartment building. Once a boyfriend of mine took me to a comedy club. Once in 6th grade I jealously made fun of a friends boyfriend and she cried and insisted on going home. Since she was one of only two guests, it didn’t end up being one of the best. One birthday, a decade ago Jaya gave me a gorgeous jewelry box I still have. But I’ve always been spoiled materially. It has been the days themselves that are tough.
Ironically it’s the presents or lack of them, or the wrinkles, or fat or increasing years that ever bothers me. My life is one million times happier and more wonderful today than it ever was at 16. And at 16 I had no responsibilities, I was skinny and really cute. I cut school and went to the beach, boys fell at my feet, life was good. But now I’m older and fatter, far less cute and the boys that fall at my feet are generally having tantrums or climbing up my leg or throwing up on my only nice shoes.
My birthdays now keep giving me trouble because of the time of year. It’s an odd time, one of indecision and limbo. Christmas is full of surprise and love, New Year’s holds promise and renewal, while the six days in between seem to just be filler. An odd blank space where people are rewinding, fast-forwarding. There is a kind of double-vision that always leaves me flat, leaves me wondering why this day my mother went into labor. Two days earlier and I would’ve been a magical Christ-child, four days later a baby made of promise. And while I am both these things on many days, on the anniversary of my birth, I am as in limbo as I was in that stairwell, coveting my friends romance and clutching keys that too quickly left my grasp. Today I am afloat, in the morning I plan to watch for shore.
On the way home I started to think about birthdays. When I was half this age, 16 years ago I was handed keys to a car the morning of my birthday, not too many months later I totaled it. One birthday I remember being drunk and crying in the stairwell of my best friends apartment building. Once a boyfriend of mine took me to a comedy club. Once in 6th grade I jealously made fun of a friends boyfriend and she cried and insisted on going home. Since she was one of only two guests, it didn’t end up being one of the best. One birthday, a decade ago Jaya gave me a gorgeous jewelry box I still have. But I’ve always been spoiled materially. It has been the days themselves that are tough.
Ironically it’s the presents or lack of them, or the wrinkles, or fat or increasing years that ever bothers me. My life is one million times happier and more wonderful today than it ever was at 16. And at 16 I had no responsibilities, I was skinny and really cute. I cut school and went to the beach, boys fell at my feet, life was good. But now I’m older and fatter, far less cute and the boys that fall at my feet are generally having tantrums or climbing up my leg or throwing up on my only nice shoes.
My birthdays now keep giving me trouble because of the time of year. It’s an odd time, one of indecision and limbo. Christmas is full of surprise and love, New Year’s holds promise and renewal, while the six days in between seem to just be filler. An odd blank space where people are rewinding, fast-forwarding. There is a kind of double-vision that always leaves me flat, leaves me wondering why this day my mother went into labor. Two days earlier and I would’ve been a magical Christ-child, four days later a baby made of promise. And while I am both these things on many days, on the anniversary of my birth, I am as in limbo as I was in that stairwell, coveting my friends romance and clutching keys that too quickly left my grasp. Today I am afloat, in the morning I plan to watch for shore.
