Birthdays

Feeling so honored to have celebrated so many

On Wednesday night, my parents, my brother, and his wife came over to our house to celebrate my birthday. I had asked if I could host my own party, merely for the fact my parents have two dogs unfamiliar with six month old babies, and if we were here, Kit could sit in her bouncer or play on her quilt on the floor. And of course, I’d get to partake in my favorite hobby: setting my table.

And so a little while after work, my family, a pan of lasagna, basket of homemade brown rolls, a three-layer chocolate cake, bottles of sparkling red grape juice, and a wrapped box of Lake pajamas arrived on my front porch. I’d vacuumed on Monday afternoon, started setting my table Tuesday night, and clipped crepe myrtle sprigs from the hedge beside our driveway for my centerpiece Wednesday morning. Barefoot, hair curled with rollers, no makeup, and a baby on my hip. Norah Jones on my tiny little speaker.

After dinner, my mom and I made our way back to the kitchen for cake, me pouring milk into old coffee mugs for me and my dad. Our entire lives, she’s used these thick number candles on our birthdays, primary colors and polka dots, the kind you get at the grocery store. When I got married, she gave me a set of my very own at my first bridal shower, and before I even pulled it out of the bag, I felt hot tears in the corners of my eyes. I remember shaking my head, putting the tissue back on top, and moving onto the next gift, unable to handle the emotions of what that gift was: my own birthday candles for my own babies. She brought her number two candle Wednesday night, but couldn’t find the six. So we used the candle from my second birthday, melted down from our twenties, and my never-been-burned six that won’t be lit again for five and a half years.

As she settled the candles into thick chocolate icing, she told me she just could not believe I’m 26, and it crossed my mind that one day, my baby girl will turn 26, too.

My birthday has always been a day hard to forget, and odd to say: September 11. Sadly, the terrible day ridden with evil and tragedy. I turned three in 2001, with plans to go to the county fair with my cousin, but of course, didn’t. As I grew up, I always felt some responsibility to honor that day, because I shared the significance of the date. I’ve visited the memorial two or three times, and as I’ve gotten older, more aware of death, those visits became harder and harder. The first birthday I spent away from my parents, my first married birthday, Price and I were midway through a Sex and the City rewatch. I had watched the series in full my junior year of college, and I was having fun watching the city with Price, too. But as we watched that night, I suddenly felt so, so overwhelmed with nausea and the urgent need to cry over it all, over those people in suits and heels and briefcases, unknowing their lives were ending.

Price turned it off, and I’ve never watched it since.

As a child, I remember being so sad when my birthday was over. I always felt so reminded of friendship and my own worth in others’ lives on my birthday. My mom and dad always woke up that morning, beautifully wrapped gifts and a big golden retriever in bed with me. Books, fancy pajamas, Kate Spade purses, typewriters, J.Crew sweaters, handwritten cards that live in old shoe boxes stacked on top of the wardrobe in my childhood bedroom.

While I was in high school, my birthday always fell on a school day. So I’d start my day wandering out to the blacktop with my bass drum and my marching shoes, ready for our 7:30 practice, feeling unbelievably loved by the shouts and well wishes once the drumline spread the reminder. It always was so lovely to celebrate while surrounded by so many. Then, my dad would send me flowers to the office and I would pick them up on my way out, proud he was a florist, and proud he loved me enough to send me some, even as I got older.

In college, my birthday got even sweeter. My freshman year, it fell on a Sunday. I woke up to my mom dropping off warm chocolate muffins at the backdoor of our dorm building before church, starting a tradition for the next five or so years. The night before, at midnight, the little group of friends we’d found those first few weeks of school knocked on my dorm window, serenading me with, oddly, Dirty Dancing’s I’ve Had The Time of My Life, my favorite song at the time. We sat for the next hour or so on the steps to the parking lot, eating some kind of dessert, me in my black satin slippers, in disbelief over how kind they were being.

My sophomore year, my girlfriends took me shopping, their gift a huge card filled with cash for me to spend on whatever I wanted. I bought a pair of stain pink stilettos with bows on the back. That night, I remember sitting in the student center, supposedly working on yearbook stories, but instead, answering all the text messages from the day, handwriting the ones that meant the most to me in a fabric bound journal that to this day still holds words that have never left me after being said.

My junior year, I spent my birthday with an ex-boyfriend, some now long lost friends, and one best friend still. We drove to Kansas City for a Needtobreathe concert. I remember how perfect the weather was…cool, soft, pink, beautiful. I wore my glasses and my hair in a braid and listened in silence, not yet knowing all the words. We drove through the night back home. The next morning, I remember a coffee shop before heading home, feeling as though it was November already with a cup of hot coffee and a sweatshirt.

The year I turned 21, we took a girlfriend’s car and drove to the city about an hour from here, dining on fancy southern cuisine and ordering cocktails even though we went to a Baptist university and shouldn’t have…weren’t allowed, actually. On the drive home, we sang Goodbye, Earl over and over (and I posted pictures on my story that I hoped Price would see. We had yet to meet, but I was interested and hoped he might say happy birthday.)

Last night, we celebrated half a year of my baby girl. She was born on a Tuesday night at 8:16 after 12 or so hours of easy labor. She was in the bath at 8:16 last night, pumping her little legs, screaming with glee at the excitement of warm water, a warm bottle soon after. I think about her birthday with such fondness, this deep and desperate ache to live it all over again, every single second of it. I wished at my birthday dinner I could have announced I was pregnant again, another little baby, another birthday to celebrate.

I can and will wait, but still. What a beautiful, beautiful day it was, her birthday.

I feel so, so very honored God has given me this amount of time, this vast, wide amount of time…26 years. What a long, long time. But so very short, too.

This year, though, I feel like I have two birthdays. The day I was born, and the day my motherhood was. I realize how significant my birthday is to my mom, her firstborn. When she tells me the story of that day, how she woke up to the Today show, timing her contractions to the clock at the bottom of the screen, how different it feels. I understand the power of birthdays now.

After everyone left last night, my house smelled like blown-out candles and Noodle & Boo baby soap, my new pajamas already spinning in the dryer so they’d be ready after my shower. My birthday feels smaller as the years go by, and that’s perfectly fine. Perfectly wonderful. My mom left the cake, and I’ll have a slice for breakfast with my coffee every morning until it’s gone, without guilt. Might as well…this cake only comes once a year.

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Peruse my birthday wishlist here!