Birthdays

I had a birthday last week.  I turned 57 and I was born in ’57 - the year of the good Chevy.   In high school, three girlfriends and I snuck into the drive-in theatre in the trunk of a ’57 Chevy.   That was more than four decades ago and it’s still fresh in my mind.  The calendar may be adding up the years, but my brain is still right back there giggling with my friends in the trunk of that car.

When my son was very young I started teaching him fractions via his quarter birthdays so I’d buy him a cookie or some little treat every three months throughout the year.  We’d also measure him on the door jam to see how much he’d grown.  He just turned 15¾ and the day slipped by without my acknowledging it. He was disappointed I hadn’t said or done anything all day to acknowledge his three-quarter birthday. I’m trying to forget my annual birthdays and he wants one every three months.

Birthdays are a funny thing.  They force us to count up the number of years we’ve been on the planet and then that number puts us on a scale of young, middle-aged or old, but it doesn’t tell much else.

The one good thing about birthdays though, is that it is one day a year we are honored by people that love us.  Cards show up in the mail, sweet notes are written, calls come in from long-time friends.  It feels good to be remembered, even if we are trying to forget that one more number gets added to the tally.

Since I turned 18, I’ve made it my birthday tradition to go somewhere I’ve never been before.  I’m not much for parties, so I leave town and go exploring.  When I was working, I’d always take my birthday off.  These days, walking on a new trail in the woods satisfies the requirement as easily as the month spent in Australia the year I turned 40.

When my mother-in-law was alive, I used to send her flowers on my husband’s birthday.  It was my way of thanking her for giving him life and raising him up to be the man I wanted to marry.  Mothers deserve more attention.

Every year on my son’s birthday, I always wonder why he’s the one that gets the party, since I’m the one that did all the work the day he was born.  The party should be for me, since the work of giving birth was just the beginning of all the effort involved in raising him.

Perhaps we could start a new tradition around birthdays in America – one that doesn’t involve adding up numbers of years spent on earth, but rather number of pleasant memories, good friends and overall blessings in a person’s life.  If this were the case, I’d be much older than 57 and it would be a good thing.