Your Special Day

Yesterday was my birthday.

All things considered, it was a pretty good day. I talked to all my kids and a few other relatives. I got many warm wishes over Facebook. Some cookies and homemade face masks were dropped off at my house by a friend. My husband made French toast for breakfast, barbecued steaks, made a cake and somehow even managed to procure gifts. Pretty good considering we’re stuck here with three feet of snow outside in the middle of a pandemic. It doesn’t compare to last year when the world was good and three kids were all in the same place at the same time and we went out for cocktails and dinner, but people made an effort to make me happy and it was appreciated.

Birthdays are funny things. No one asked to be born, yet we honour their existence with greetings and gifts on that one day. That one day when we are encouraged to be self indulgent, to celebrate our own uniqueness, rather than thinking about others.

I think back on the birthdays of long ago, those many birthdays of my childhood, a childhood where birthdays were big events thanks mostly to my mom. I try to find meaning. 

I am sure if she had been born in a different era, Mom would have been a career woman but she was a 1960s mom who put all her energies into home and community and family. She loved big projects and entertaining. She included everyone in these events. I wonder now if she had ever been excluded herself in her own childhood. Or if growing up in the depression  made her more aware of the suffering of others. She never talked about it, but I wonder. Or perhaps as a teacher in a series of small towns, she had seen the pain that exclusion caused. Or maybe that was just who she was. Whatever the reason, Mom insisted that every girl in my class got invited to my big day. She spent weeks experimenting with crafts and games and cooking and making goody bags and always seemed to pull off the big event effortlessly.  I know she wanted me to feel special and I did. And she wanted to be a good hostess by making all her guests feel welcome. These parties caused me stress. I was the centre of attention, something I have never enjoyed. I was a quiet introverted kid who mostly lived in a magical world of my own imagination and big crowds made me anxious.

Grade two me.

In grade two there were 42 kids in our class, half girls, and they were all invited to my birthday. Mom went all out. Goody bags were paper lunch bags decorated with bunny faces and bunny ears. Cookies were little nests of dough rolled in coconut and filled with jellybean eggs. Crafts were making our own decoupage brooches out of photos cut from magazines. I had a new dress for the day. 

Me with my best friends Patti and Vivianne

It was spring, most of the snow had melted, and I was on my way back to school after lunch on party day when I was suddenly gripped by such stomach pains I had to lie down on the side of the road-it was pure nerves. Eventually I dragged my way back home where I was put promptly to bed before the party.  On any other day, after school activities would have been cancelled. You don’t go to school, you don’t do anything else.  But 20-plus little girls were coming to a party, so the party was going to happen.

And so it proceeded. A lot of running around. A cake shaped like a castle. So many presents. Colouring books and crayons and paper dolls. Girls I barely knew dressed in their party dresses, standing awkwardly with other girls. Shy girls, poor girls, farm girls, daughters of engineers and teachers and truck drivers and the unemployed- I guess. I didn’t think about that back then. I didn’t know unemployment or poverty existed. All I knew was that I was at the centre of things and I didn’t much like it. I was supposed to be friends with kids I didn’t even know. I was eight. It was supposed to be all about me. And it wasn’t about me at all.

Girls and cake

It’s something I look back on and wonder about. I wonder what my mom was thinking. I know my grade three party was a lot smaller. And I think about how the most powerful lessons in life are not necessarily the intended lessons. My mom probably learned something about me that she didn’t know. I learned something about her. I also learned a little bit about what it means to be a hostess. Mostly what I learned was that nothing is ever all about you. Not really. Even when you want it to be.

Nothing.

As my big day unfolded yesterday, I read about impossible situations in our province, country, continent and globe. Layoffs and shortages and homelessness. Uncertainty. Homelessness. Hunger. Fear.

As I celebrated being me, I watched the coronavirus numbers tick ever upward, so many infected and the dying here in my own province and in the world at large. Almost impossible to imagine as I sit here in my comfortable house in my little town.

Every day we all go about our business, trying to fill our time, thinking about our minor inconveniences and our larger struggles but underneath it all, we wonder where things will end up when all is said and done. What will the world look like? How many will die? How will we live?

Yesterday was my birthday. It was full of well-wishes and phone calls and gifts and doing whatever I wanted. But it wasn’t just about me. It never is. Ticking away in the background is always injustice and inequality and uncertainty and people trying to make things better.

It’s a lesson that has taken me a long time to learn.

Thanks Mom.