Today is my birthday.
I am technically a grown woman, but I still get goofily excited about my birthday. There is a picture that Mitra took of me at one of my birthday parties that totally captures my goofy excitement. The cake has just been placed in front of me. The candle is still lit. I look like a happy Muppet.
Unless I’m going through a really rough patch, I wake up feeling like that on my birthday. I think I just feel grateful to be alive, maybe. I like marking the years as they roll by.
A July 3rd birthday was kind of terrible when I was a kid. Everyone was away for the long weekend. I had several parties with just one friend in attendance. Mom would still make a vanilla cake with strawberries, my favorite. We’d still sing and play. We’d go bowling or to the patriotic miniature golf course on Route 9. Yep, Route 9 was significant to me back then, too.
One year, Mom and me and Mom’s boyfriend, Lance, and his daughter, Michaela all went to see Can’t Stop the Music, the Citizen Kane of cocaine-fueled, hastily-written, disco-focused films starring the barely-closeted Village People. Michaela and I thought it was amazing! Mom and Lance were less impressed.
Another year, when more friends were around, I had my party at Spin-Off, the super cool roller disco across from Fenway Park. The birthday kid always got a solo turn on the floor while the DJ played Celebration. I’d been looking forward to that for much, then the DJ called for me while I was in another room eating cake. I was devastated. I got to solo skate to something else — there was some law against playing Celebration twice, or something — but it wasn’t the same.
On my thirtieth birthday, my friends had a little party for me in the back room of the bar on Houston where they worked. No one had thought to get cake, so Eric Cooper ran out and got a bunch of Twinkies at a bodega that he stacked on a plate. I still consider that one of the sweetest gestures anyone has made for me.
I was married when my fortieth came around. I sat on the deck off our apartment for twelve hours while my then-husband fed me and people I loved came and went. It was pretty amazing. All those sparsely-attended parties in my youth make me love a birthday hanging out with a bunch of people.
My fiftieth birthday happened smack in the middle of the COVID lockdown. In order to see people, I sat in my side yard while my friends strolled by or sat at a distance. Mom brought a cake. Mom always brought a cake. If Mom had been in NYC for my thirtieth, there would have been cake.
Mom can’t bring me cake anymore, but my brother is going to visit her today to let her wish me a happy birthday via FaceTime. I’ll have cake later, at the restaurant Sarah and Holland are taking me to. It’ll be good. We’re seeing a movie first, one with better reviews than Can’t Stop the Music ever got.
Until then, I’m getting all the free birthday perks I can get. Fancy coffee drinks, shots of espresso, ice cream sundaes. It’s my birthday! I’m still alive! Hooray!
Happy birthday!