Birthdays, And How I Learned To Celebrate In My Own Way

Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles on a cake,
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash,
Yet there was time to wish.


~ Donald Justice

On the other site, I read a post today from Kel, one of my favorite bloggers, about how Sept 11th is her kid's birthday, and since 9/11 celebrating hasn't felt the same. A lot of people on her post were saying that you must still celebrate, keep thinking of it as a sacred day, but I'm not sure that you ever can get past a thing like that.

The two weeks around my own birthday are marred with tragedy in our family - personal tragedy, nothing on the scale of 9/11, but tragedy nonetheless. Until this year, I have never had a birthday that was happy. I knew from watching other families that birthdays are supposed to be times of celebration, but I've never known one that didn't involve guilt for existing and a mother who wished she didn't. Even the years that she was fairly stable, and made an effort, I always knew that if the world had gone the way it was meant to then my brother would be here and I would not.

As a kid, I tried to celebrate anyway. We had parties, balloons, jelly cups, played Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Laughed, danced, and hid the fact that ten days from now Mom would be wailing and telling her four-year-old (or six-year-old, or ten-year-old) how much she wished she was dead. And once or twice, in the earliest days, actually attempting it...but I digress.

It's not that I blame her. She tried. And because she knew that she'd never succeed in making my birthday what it should be, we had other times of the year that were really special. Halloween parties where we did all the things that you'd normally do on a birthday, as well as trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins. Christmas Craft Clubs, held every Saturday morning from Thanksgiving until Christmas, where my schoolfriends came over and each week we'd make a different Christmas decoration. (Paper plate Santas and manger scenes and baubles when I was five, stuffed felt stockings to hang on the tree when I was six, cotton sacks decorated with fabric paints and gutta and stuffed with candy or home-made pot pourri when I was seven...) Thanksgiving dinners, Valentines masquerades, Easter egg hunts in the garden or on the beach. Living with a bipolar (even if never truly diagnosed) mother meant that when she wasn't depressed and suicidal, she was on top of the world, rejoicing in the beauty of life and celebrating every possible occasion. And most of the time she was a good mother. A wonderful mother. We did all sorts of things, had all sorts of adventures, that most kids - especially most English kids - never dream of.

So with all that, the birthday thing shouldn't bother me, right?

Wrong.

I think part of the stress was that we always tried. Often trying to enjoy a thing, whether you like it or not, is infinitely more painful than just treating is as though it's nothing. The years I was twelve and thirteen, Mom and her then boyfriend agreed to let me have a huge party in a local hall, with fifty or sixty kids invited from school (and another fifty or sixty who gategrashed, LOL ) and a DJ. Nothing personal, nothing family-oriented, nothing that would mean I needed anything from my mother. That worked well. But by the time I was fourteen, I was missing two thirds of my classes at school, and drifting apart from a lot of my schoolfriends, and throwing a big party when the teachers were demanding to know why I wasn't attending classes seemed like a sham. So I said, no more birthdays. And none of the family accepted that, and the stressful cycle of trying and failing to enjoy ourselves started up again.

Then I started getting sick around or on my birthday. Stomach bugs. Appendicitis. Kidney infections. Pneumonia. Mono. People always asked how I could have such bad luck, but I never wondered. I may work in the medical field, but I also have a lot of respect for the effects of emotional state on the body. For the last couple years I've begged the family and friends to forget my birthday, treat it as just another day. They wouldn't. I explained the illness and the past tragedies politely, several times, to everyone who asked. They ignored me. I explained not-so-politely, and said that I really didn't want to be reminded of things that happened in the past. They persisted in asking me what I wanted to do, and showing up with presents and cards and telling me they were taking me to dinner, and told me what Kel's posters are telling her - that you have to push through the pain, and reclaim the day as your own. I threw a tantrum, scorching the earth with my anger, and asking everyone how they could be so goddamn disrespectful as to ignore my wishes when it's MY day. They told me I was being horrible and unreasonable when they were only trying to help. I bubbled over with rage and resentment for a couple weeks, and eventually shrugged and decided that birthdays are like funerals - they're for the benefit of the guests, not the host.

I gave up. This year I told everyone that they could do as many presents and parties and evenings out as they wanted, on the condition that they did it three months later, on the third of May. They looked at me strangely, and asked me a dozen times if I was sure, but they respected it. We had a lovely BBQ and loads of cards and gifts, and cake, and everyone sang to me. On my actual birthday, I went shopping alone and bought a couple of books and a Beyond Sudoku magazine and some presents for Mom, and everyone left me alone. I didn't get sick. It was a strange compromise, but one that worked.

My profiles online, store cards that give you gifts on your birthday, diaries - all but the most official documents - have my birthday down as May 3rd. I still identify with the Aquarius horoscopes, but for all other intents and purposes I consider myself a May child. February can never be a happy month for me, not after more than a quarter-century of misery. But birthdays can...you just have to think laterally.