~:: On Birthdays ::~

Behinder and behinder.

In our house, at some point, I made a decree: Christmas is all about Christ, but birthdays are all about YOU. I always hated the sit-on-Santa-and-ask-for-stuff thing. So for my poor children, if Santa’s lap was involved, the mandate was to list only the things their brothers and sisters would be delighted to find under the tree. The Santas were not helpful in this regard.  “But what do YOU want?” I didn’t want that to be the question. Christmas is about giving and babies and sacrifice and miracles.  And about your parents knowing, by watching and paying attention, the things of your heart.

Not so for birthdays. Birthdays were declared a bald-faced self-fest. You could greedily make lists of wild desires. You were allowed to beg and hint and think only of your own heart’s desires. The day was about the child. Kid picked activities.  Kid picked the restaurant.

I think this proclamation happened after the year I was pregnant with Murphy and made Chaz and Cam, whose birthdays are about ten days apart, share the same dang day, cake and party.

Not my actual birthday, but pretty close.

My mom was great about birthdays. I can remember at least two parties—the one when I made the blown egg bunnies and chicks for favors (and learned that not everybody appreciates the time you spend to make them something), and the one in the basement of the second Kansas City house; the party when Mom came up with the giggle gun—you point it at somebody and they can’t giggle for one minute or they’re “it.”

She was good with the games and the planning and presents and mystery. Not that she gave parties every year, but it only takes one great time to make a kid feel like something actually did happen every year.

Mommy and me

Mostly, I just really almost totally remember the feeling. Birthdays had almost a taste to them.  Not cake taste.  Something else, an emotional taste that came of the mystery and anticipation and hope and excitement. I think children feel like they actually glow on their birthdays, like they’re set apart from the common creatures—and that everybody can tell, just by looking.

The magic’s in the details, mostly. The tiny attentions. The little privileges. And the boxes wrapped in special paper, all sitting on the table—a temporary taunting.

One year, I snuck into my mother’s closet—I’m thinking it was LA, because they had a very small closet that was very dark. And I don’t know how I knew that the presents would be hidden there; maybe some kind of inner compass with birthday as north. But there was this brown paper bag full of boxes. I fished through it and found the Spirograph, the one incredible desire of my heart. (And yes, they let me watch Saturday cartoons—my children did NOT—because things they made you want to buy never did quite live up to the hype.)

My mom said to me, “Were you in my closet?” And I cannot tell a lie: I told a lie. A wide-eyed and innocent whopper: I had no idea what she was talking about. “Why do you ask?” I inquired cannily.  “Because,” she said, “your presents were in there and there was a certain box suddenly at the very top.”

It’s too late now to tell her the truth.  And the peek really didn’t spoil the surprise. How can  you can hold a coveted thing in your hands and still be insane with excitement when you open it?  But I was.

Everything is out of the reach of children. They can’t drive places. They don’t have money. They’re tempted on all sides by heartless Madison Avenue suits who know very little about what a child’s heart is like. But on this one day, magically, all things are possible—and wildest dreams just might come true.

I turned sixteen the May just before we moved from New York to Texas. Two weeks before school was out. I had time for one date, one chance to go out with a beautiful boy. But the boy who took me out wasn’t the one I wanted.  Then it was summer, and people who don’t drive yet have a hard time making social.

We moved to Texas in September, after the school year had started. I made some friends, but there was so much culture shock and so little backstory—I was just a tiny fish coming from my high school of several hundred to this big-hair Texas school with three thousand kids in it.  That spring, just before graduation, I wanted to have a birthday party, but one of The Most Popular Girls (who was dating the boy I had a terrible crush on) was having hers the same night—so she invited me to hers, and with kind grace had everyone sing to me.

I liked being little better.

My favorite birthday—after the ones my mother engineered—happened in 1976. That was my magic year.  My year of grace and magic. I was in grad school. I was finally almost at home in my self. My friend Kira and I spent a lot of time in the mountains, playing Irish music on harp and flute and talking about love and magic. Hope was everywhere. It was palpable. I was alive enough to feel the blood passing through the veins in my own wrists.

Not a lot of pictures of me back in those days. But this was about the same time. I’m on the right.  We’re supposed to be those classical theatrical masks: Maria was comedy, I was tragedy. Sort of. For the picture.

Early that birthday morning, I found white lilacs on my front porch.  They were tucked under the ancient tin mailbox. I still don’t know who left them. A few minutes later, Bill Cushenberry came to get me and took me to Baskin Robbins for ice cream sundae breakfast. All day, magic sprang from the corners, the grass, the air. The lily of the valley grew thickly under the window of that ancient rented house, and the scent of them made us heady. A thousand friends appeared out of nowhere. It was all so clear, and I felt lovely.

The next great birthday was when Murphy was about three—G planned a kidnapping and all of the children were in on the planning.  Nobody spilled the beans, even Murph. G shook me awake at three in the morning and said, “You’ve got to get dressed and come with me.”  He led me out to the VW van where all the children, dressed and strapped in, sat grinning.  The thing was full of packed bags of all sorts.  And we were off to Disneyland.  I hadn’t had to plan or pack or do a single thing. Not even defend the extravagance.

Last week’s birthday was quietly amazing. G asked me what I’d like to do, suggesting a horse ride in the morning. So we planned that and a trip to Park City and some exotic, artsy shop trolling. But in the end, going places wasn’t what I wanted.  I spent the first two hours of the early morning returning a totally unexpected barrage of Facebook greetings.  Just amazing. And the evening having dinner with the kids – Chaz and Lorri had planned to take me out – and then a crazy movie with almost all the kids.

That’s my best thing now, my very favorite: being with these people I love so much—sharing jokes and evil food—with that ancient context we share.

I thank you all so much for your good wishes – life is an amazing gift.  When we have eyes to see and ears to hear with, magic still springs full grown from the corners and grass and trees and air.  But mostly from love—the love we plowed and planted and watered till it grew into connection and friendship and life.

So, yeah. I had a good day.