Happy Birthday

Well, the Birthday Monster made his unwelcome annual appearance at my house two weeks ago. Paul is now in his favorite time of the year –the five weeks when he is living with an older woman.  Actually, I can’t complain too much, since this was a really special birthday - early morning and late afternoon naps with Willem snoozing on my chest and a cake with “Happy Birthday Nana” in lavender icing.  It doesn't get much better than that.  

This birthday brought back lots of memories of past birthdays and birthday parties.  I’ve come a long way from my

second birthday party which seems to have been a fancy dress event. I'm surprised I wasn't wearing white gloves and smoking a clothespin in honor of the occasion.   I don't have any photos or any memory of the rest of my  kid birthday parties except the last one.  For my eleventh birthday, my mom planned a grown-up affair modeled after her own bridge parties.   She set up  three tables of Crazy Bridge, cut sandwiches in the shapes of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades and set out fancy bridge snacks.  The party ended, however, with a food fight. (I do remember who started it, but I’m not telling.)

As an adult, I prefer to keep a low profile where birthdays are concerned; and, for the record, a surprise birthday party is DEFINITELY not on my bucket list.   I did love the time David and John surprised me with a birthday breakfast in bed – home made brownies with a crunchy red glaze which is what happens if you make icing using granulated sugar rather than confectioners’ sugar.  It was a little funky but, hey, brownies are brownies, especially at 7 a.m. when you’re expecting Cheerios. 

I was always much more into celebrating other people’s birthdays, starting with David and John.  Their early

birthday parties were fun but a little wild – our party photos are blurry, crowded and chaotic.  There was an outer space party with a blue, rocket shaped cake, a pirate party with tons of balloons and a dinosaur party with a brontosaurus piñata and “Pin the Teeth on the Tyrannosaurus,” designed by John.  When the boys were older, the logistics of crowd control led us to move the birthday parties to a nearby bowling alley, which worked well except for the time when one of David’s guests, a known wing-nut, lofted his bowling ball into the air.  It landed three alleys over.

Paul and I survived all the Over-the-Hill birthday parties for our friends and family as they turned 40. Now, 40 seems more like halfway up the hill and the joke gifts like Ex-Lax, Advil and Depends aren’t necessarily a joke.  Paul’s 50th which he celebrated with our dinner club offered a surreal  moment.  It was July 3rd so, after dinner, we sat in lawn chairs outside for fireworks and sparklers arranged by the host couple’s teen-aged son.  We suddenly realized that, 30 years hence, it would be déjà vu with us sitting in rockers on the front porch of the old folks home while some nice young man set off fireworks for us, handed around and lit our sparklers and tried to keep us from falling asleep.

Two family birthdays stand out from the rest.  For my mom’s 65th , we all decided to surprise her at the beach.  This allowed my dad to keep a bunch of secrets from my mom – the best birthday present he ever had and it wasn't even his birthday.  He loved playing James Bond, keeping her in the dark while he rented a large beach house, arranged a birthday dinner and collected some basics with which to stock the house.  She, on the other hand, signed him up for a hearing test and an Alzheimer’s assessment because he kept buying paper towels, toilet tissue, soft drinks and lots of other stuff which she loudly and repeatedly told him they didn’t need.  When we made our unexpected appearance, Mom was both surprised and relieved.

My dad’s 70th birthday could have been titled “Kangaroo Court.”  We celebrated on Friday night in my brother’s beach condo with streamers, confetti, cake and ice cream.  By Saturday afternoon, everyone was looking for the remains of the 12 pints of Graeter’s ice cream I had brought to the party.  My brother denied all knowledge of the alleged pints and wound up on trial for ice cream theft, a capital offense in our family.  The evidence was circumstantial but compelling – he couldn’t produce the left-over pints and eyewitnesses had seen him and his family tanking into a breakfast of birthday cake and ice cream that morning.  The deck was stacked against Mark with a hard-nosed prosecutor (David), a sincere but green defense attorney (John), damning witnesses (his wife and daughters) and a

bloodthirsty jury (my parents and my sister.)   Clearly, he was headed for the gallows. A grave miscarriage of justice was averted by a last minute visit to the locus in quo, i.e. his condo, where the extra Graeter’s was found in a plastic bag at the back of the freezer.  Just another fun, family get-together!

I guess, in the end, birthdays aren’t so bad; and the birthday greetings from family and friends are very nice.  Of course, my brother always weighs in with some zinger of a card.  This year, he also left a voice message: “Happy Birthday . . . I guess now you’re going to have to change your blog to “Getting Further Away From Sixty.”

 Click the link below to hear "In Just No Time At All," my favorite song about getting older. It's part of a scene from the musical "Pippin." 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfAGN6o3Jg&feature=PlayList&p=957223BC4D73B890&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=40