Tuesday, May 17, 2011

It's My Party



I have gathered you all here to this blog to reveal that I have turned another year older.

I've decided that I'm none too thrilled about it, thank you very much. My previous stance on "my birthday" is being revoked.

"What brings about this change," you ask? "Birthdays are fun", you say. "Birthdays celebrate YOU!", you exclaim! "Birthdays are magical days full of wishes", you implore.

Hear that sound? It's the distinct clink of the pin in the balloon.


These things were only true at my seventh birthday, when I got the Play-Doh supermarket set, the Golden Barbie doll and the bubble bath that the giver poured down the sink to make sure that it worked.
And on my tenth, when I wore my mom's cute purple shirt, white ribbon in my hair and got my first ten-speed bike.




As a 'grown-up' I've expected too much of that promised birthday magic and thus have been led to these new more appropriate feelings of magic-lessness. No, it's not a reverse psychology strategy. Like all the other hallmark holidays, that I now loathe (you know who you are valentine's day), they are about forced feelings of cheer, or love or joy and excuses to eat fat and sugar without guilt. I'm no longer buying it.

So, this birthday ends quietly and without the usual heaps of disappointment as my expectations were for once appropriate. No one made me a cake or threw me a party. It was just another day and the DMV sent me a new license.

Except for this:

My best gift this year was in the poetry of a lyric from the guest blogger.
It's perfect.
I'll share it because no one likes a mystery, but part of me wants to keep it in my heart just for myself.

You went to the doctor, You went to the mountains
You looked to the children, You drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing you in a crooked line
The less you seek your source for some definitive
The closer you are to fine.

The closer you are to fine.

The closer you are to fine.