I cannot recall when it hasn’t rained on our birthday, an occasion I’ve shared with my sister three years my junior. Year on year, it’s marked by cancelled schooldays or wet workdays as gloomy skies drench the earth at my side of the world.
An unforgettable one would be a weekend when I was turning 9 or 10, and for the first time in our young lives, my mom bought us the biggest ice cream cake I’ve laid eyes on. It was, based on my spotty recollection, pink and blue with turrets of white clouds, which probably gave off wisps of ice-cold air when you breathe on it too close. I guess that birthday was pretty special but as with usual, the weather turned typhoon and what was to be a child’s dream of being surrounded by play buddies enjoying the ultimate cake became just our closest neighbors — mostly elderly ladies who were friends with my grandma — who were practically begged to help finish the cake. Because sadly, not many kids showed up, and mid party, electric power also went out.
Two years ago, I organized to have friends and fam gather at my neighborhood bar. I wanted to celebrate 40 or so years of being but also was curious at how different parts and peoples of my life would fare if I put them in a room together. I had this vision of a hollywoodesque kind of movie scene, with my closest buds chitchatting, drinking, and just merrily getting along. But then…you can probably guess how it ended. A storm casually strolled by and I had a whopping 5 guests, if you can call my 3 best friends and 2 teenaged kids that. So much for that movie in my head.
So yeah I’m used to having people not show up for my birthday. To be utterly excited only to end up again disappointed, with a birthday whose season is more stay-at-home weather. It’s ok, it’s cool, I’d often say, but deep inside, the sunny Leo personality in me, that secret extrovert who lives being with friends and fam, whatever the occasion but more so one’s birthday, dies…a little. Dang it, I celebrate just one day as mine and not even the weather bothered.
Yet year on year, no matter how disheartening it can probably turn out to be, there’s always that one thing, or two, that makes for the day to be special. Birthdays are mostly marked by food, and the ones I remember most are no exception.
There’s my 6th birthday, which we celebrated at school, with spaghetti and balloons all around my kindergarten classroom, and me and my sister wearing matching jumpers while my teacher and mom fussed with serving everyone. There was one at home, and we did homemade party hats out of cardboard, and loaded ourselves with those hotdog and marshmallow skewers. And in recent years, one Saturday night with my high school girlfriends at a karaoke bar, where we stuffed ourselves silly and sang “just one more song, just one more song” well into the night.
With the pandemic still in our midst, we’ve all probably had the strange experience of celebrating the day quite unusually, and more quietly. We’ve all been trying our best to live by the prescribed lockdowns and so for two birthdays now, I’ve had to put up with being by my lonesome, ordering food good for one, and doing zoom calls while friends watch me grudgingly blow my birthday candles.
It was my 46th last week, which I celebrated introspectively and lazily, with planning for the day to be totally unplanned. And there wasn’t that one big thing that made for it to be special. But rather, tiny things that happened throughout the day that made for it. It was the cake the girls sent, the caricature that Ava made, that conversation with Kiks. They felt like little jewels — like sea glass you pick up when you go down the beach, or when your tiny baby clutches your finger, or that first swig of ice-cold beer. It might sound common, and everyday, but when put together, becomes a wad of special.
As I’ve written that day on a Facebook post, “…here I am today trying to remember that light is always there, even if we are in shadows. Thanks to everyone for all of today’s light.” Indeed, I am so thankful for this one, and the tiny lights it has sparked.
Finally Dee 