Birthdays

Some birthdays are more memorable than others. I have now experienced 73 of them, plus the original event which I cannot remember. I expect it felt somewhat traumatic. It’s a fact that the woman giving birth (if it’s natural childbirth) remembers every detail of each of her children’s births, but not her own. Good deal!

I believe it’s important to celebrate a birthday ON the actual day. Anything else simply does not compute to the emotional clock within. This, of course, is possible only once every four years for those born on February 29. Thankfully, that is not my case, although I DO have a son born on December 23, and had a husband born on December 26. By the way, holding out one of the Christmas gifts for the birthday and calling it a birthday gift fools no one. These children watch their siblings get gifts and celebrations on their non-Christmas birthdays and can well recognize when they are being shortchanged. So, parents, friends, and lovers, “TAKE HEED!”

I can recall crawling around under the dining room table at my 4^th birthday party and being forced to sit still at the table with my small handful of friends to blow out the candles and eat the cake and ice cream. There are a couple of pictures. That’s mostly all I recall of that one.

My 7^th birthday fell on Good Friday, so Mother gave me a celebration on another day, believing it would be inappropriate to have a party on that solemn day. But the actual DAY of my birthday, I recall because of the horrendous storm that turned day into night (almost like in the Bible). Our residential street in Alexandria, VA was a veritable RIVER. The pounding rain was loud enough, but the thunder and lightning added to the drama. Patty, Stan, and I kneeled on the couch, elbows on its upholstered back, gazing out the living room window onto Paxton Street. Out of the darkness, we heard the ice cream truck’s jingle. Mr. Frosty was coming down the street despite the weather! We could see him inside his glass-incased van, all lit up from the inside, reflecting on the pooling water around it. For once, our begging paid off and Mother allowed us to run out to the curb, umbrellas and coins in hand to get that fantastic soft-serve twirly ice cream treat and bring it inside to enjoy. She rarely let us buy from either Mr. Frosty or the Good Humor truck, so this was EXTRA special!

My 12^th birthday also fell on Good Friday. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was also the day of the great 9.2 earthquake in Alaska, when an entire Anchorage neighborhood sank into the ground from liquifaction. From the quake and resulting tsunami, 139 people perished that day. I learned of that years later, after my sister moved to Anchorage. When I visited her, she took me to “Earthquake Park,” where they did not rebuild the ruined neighborhood.

After we moved to Rhode Island for the second time, I instituted my own private celebration each year, trotting down the two blocks to Brenton Cove to watch the sunrise over the water. And I would close out the day walking the opposite two-block direction to the rocky shore of Narragansett Bay to watch the sun set over that water and watch Clingstone (an amazing house built on a rock in the bay) disappear into the evening shadows. That birthday ritual lasted for four years while we lived on that narrow peninsula at Fort Adams.

But, for my 18^th birthday, we were in Quantico. I COULD have walked the four or six blocks down through Q-Town to the marina on the Potomac River there, but in 1970 that shoreline was a disgusting, stinky place where the algae was so thick you could drop a pebble into it and watch the green sludge fold around it as it sank in slow motion. I could barely breath from the stench of the suffocated fish floating next to the sailboats. Instead, I enlisted my friend, Sue Eskam, to join me on a pre-dawn hike upriver, following the train tracks across the trestle bridge over Quantico Creek.

And so, in the pitch darkness, I rolled out of bed, pulled on my jeans and sweatshirt, packed a paper lunch bag of my favorite foods (at that time), two little tubs of blueberry yogurt, an unopened pack of Fig Newtons, two spoons and a couple of napkins. I snuck out the back door and took the shortcut through the woods, down the steep, vine-covered slope that would bypass the Sentry Shack, crossed the road, and made my way up the streets of the base housing area where Sue lived. (Quantico was a very large base with several different housing developments scattered throughout). My cheeks were stinging in the early spring chill as I tossed a pebble at Sue’s second-floor window. In a moment she was with me in the dark yard.

The train tracks traversed a road at the back of her neighborhood. Just as we headed down the tracks, someone’s beagle puppy joined us and insisted on following us the entire way. We were well aware these were not abandoned tracks and that in some areas they lay within a deep trench with steep sloping walls of loose, red dirt. We were smart enough to know to listen and/or FEEL for the rumbling of an approaching train and get the heck OFF the tracks should one approach. At one point we did have to scramble up that slope, a finger dug in under the puppy’s collar, when we heard a train coming. That little puppy added to the drama, knowing it was someone’s beloved new pet and somehow, we had become responsible for it.

We must have followed the tracks one or two miles. Who can say, but the black sky was slowly graying and by the time we hit the trestle we were beginning to make out some colors in the spring foliage beside the tracks. The birds had awakened and were filling the pre-dawn with nature’s music. Not far beyond the trestle the dirt mounds and trees gave way to a clear view of the river right next to the tracks. We scrambled onto what we thought was a gravel or rock dump, probably 20 feet above the river’s edge, and sat there watching the sky brighten. I swear I could HEAR the sun rising like a drumroll, just like a drumroll at the circus before some great acrobatic feat was mounted. We opened up the sack and ate the breakfast I’d brought and waited for that giant golden-rose-colored orb to rise above the forested skyline across the river. We silently watched it send its streaking light across the water’s diamond-like surface and flood rich colors on the undersides of the scattered clouds above.

It was awesome!

Having accomplished our mission, it was time to head back home and get ready for school. At that point we realized we were sitting on a giant mound of black coal. We’d have some cleaning up to do before school! It was while we were half-way across the trestle that we felt the rumble. We had to grab for that puppy and just made it to the side step-off when that train overtook us and passed by us short inches away. I turned my head to avoid any sand or pebbles, or what-have-you that might be thrown up by those big iron wheels as they roared past us in a mechanical wind storm. We were fully awake, eyes the size of large marshmallows, hearts pounding, as we raced back down the track, praying to get back to the road before another train came by. I was carrying that puppy the whole way. Once we cleared the tracks and were a stone’s throw from the houses, I put that puppy down and we chased him off toward the houses, hopeful that someone was there looking for him. We scurried off too fast for him to follow us.

I was back in my bedroom, in fact in the shower before my parents even woke up, dressed and ready for school. It was a Friday. I know this because that night I was at the Teen Hut with all the other teens from school, still snacking on my Fig Newtons. That was the day that I learned not to mix yogurt and Fig Newtons. By that evening, everything in my digestive tract had been completely evacuated.

After that, it was decades before another birthday when I could watch the sunrise over the water again. I could watch the sunrise, but who wants to watch it rising over the rooftops and trashcans across the street?

I can’t recall another notable birthday until my 50^th, which thanks to my children and Cloyde, was a whole week of really special celebrations. My children informed me that I was “over the hill” to which I replied, “Which hill? Life is a mountain range!”

Then came my 53^rd birthday, the ONLY year in my life when my birthday fell on Easter Sunday. What I’d expected to be spectacular turned into a non-event. My children were all out of the house by then, off to college or beyond. Two other co-workers had birthdays earlier in March and had been roundly celebrated, but not mine – maybe because it fell on the weekend, or maybe because they didn’t much like me. Either way, I felt abandoned. I think even Cloyde was away or busy. I don’t know.

In my head I was reciting, “Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. I think I’ll go eat worms.” So, I went to my favorite store, “Stones and Bones,” and wandered around in it until something spoke to me saying, “Take me home!” and I found a BIG hunk of rose quartz the size of a countertop cheese grater. It was beautiful and I bought it for myself and took it home. I spent some time creating just the right display space for it on the library table in my living room. There it stood, glistening in the lamplight looking like the supreme royal boulder with magical vibrations.

Cloyde came home and asked me why that big chunk of pink gravel was sitting on the table.

Anyway, until Cloyde died three years ago, he always did something to make my birthday special, and I always tried to make his special, too, even though it was the day after Christmas. Which brings me to the birthday I just had….

I play cards every Monday with a lovely group of ladies. For every month that there is a birthday, we celebrate all birthdays for that month on an agreed upon Monday. There are two of us with March birthdays and we had already combined the celebration with St. Patrick’s Day. It was very nice, but it was ten days before my actual birthday. My birthday was on a Thursday, the day that I always get my framing deliveries an hour before the Gallery is supposed to open. I fill in that hour between by joining a group of the guys at the coffee shop for breakfast. Thursday is also the day that my dog, Perkins is often invited for a playdate with her sister.

Perkins’s sister is named Savanna. She lives with Meow Kitty at Pam and Walt’s house. (The playdate invitations come directly from Savanna as text messages on Walt’s phone, addressed to ‘Auntie Babwa.’) Pam had planned a “Happy Hour” at day’s end when I picked up Perkins, just a simple little celebration. Anyway, I planned to get an early start to get Perkins to her destination, then meet Ryan, the delivery guy, and zip over to the café for a nice birthday breakfast. That was my plan.

I’d had my glasses on my face when I first got up. Obviously, I had to take them off to shower. But when it came time to leave, I couldn’t find them ANYWHERE! Up and down the stairs I went, in and out of every room. Finally, I picked up a pair of “cheaters” (drug store reading glasses) and got in the truck with Perkins. It was too late to drop her off with Walt. Ryan was already waiting for me at the gallery. Having dealt with him, I put my cheaters on in the truck, then dropped them into the cup holder, and took Perkins to Savanna’s house, then headed to the coffee shop. For the first time, ever NONE of the gang was there. Not one of them! So, I got my coffee and breakfast to-go and headed to the gallery. But now, I couldn’t find my cheaters, either!

I dropped off my laptop in my office and noticed that I still had ten minutes before opening time. I decided to run back home and search again for my glasses. Ten minutes turned into twenty and those glasses were just gone. I knew as I headed back to the Gallery that Cloyde had done it! This is EXACTLY the kind of trick that he would play on me. I could just see him leaning up against the wall, arms crossed, snickering as I went crazy looking for not one, but TWO pairs of glasses!

Long story short, when I got back to the gallery in the truck, I found the cheaters wedged between the seat and the center console (NO! I had looked there BEFORE!) And when I got into my office and opened up my laptop case, there were my glasses. (Yes! I had looked there before, also!!!) It had to have been Cloyde. He remembered my birthday, which was good because the only Birthday card I’d received at that point was from my Insurance Agent!

After I left Savanna’s house, where my birthday WAS remembered, but not with a cake, I stopped at the grocery store and bought a carrot cake for myself. Then I went home, stuck some candles in it, and sang “Happy Birthday to Me.” I did get birthday phone calls. It was not a bad day. It was a weird day.

Not dead, yet. Let’s see how many more I can celebrate!