Happy Birthday to Me
September 18, 1966
Today is my birthday. It is tradition in our family that we spend this day in quiet contemplation, gathering around us good thoughts and gratitude for all of the blessings in our lives. The day begins earlier than usual, at sunrise if possible, and outside in nature, experiencing the day from its birth to its death at sunset. I know that the day extends to midnight but I never manage to stay awake. Besides, sitting outside after dark without lights scares me just a little. I tried it once a couple of years ago, armed with a flashlight. I prefer to end my day at sunset, with the last vestiges of sunlight disappearing into the deep velvet of the coming night.
My sister Lulu argues constantly that her birthday begins immediately after midnight on the twenty-fifth of May, so she spends twenty-four hours celebrating, ignoring tradition, gamboling around town from bar to bar letting strangers buy her drinks. We don’t see Lulu on the twenty-sixth of May—ever. My father laughs and says that Lulu has her own way of contemplating her blessings: with a tomato juice and tabasco sauce chaser and a bottle of aspirin the day after. I will spend today following family tradition but in my own way, in silence.
The grass was wet under my bare feet as I walked to the old wooden swing in the backyard, the best vantage point at which to see the sun come up through the trees. I wrapped myself in Grandma’s old quilt and snuggled into the corner, resting my head on the arm of the swing, and waited. The houses around me were dark and quiet. It would be at least an hour before even the birds began their morning flights for food so I had plenty of time to contemplate my other birthdays, other peaceful, quiet days.
Sometimes this day is a school day and I am allowed to stay home, but not today. Today is Sunday, a day of family togetherness and escape from the usual harrowing routine of our lives. Today, I am exempt from even that, though, the strict mandate from my father that we spend at least one day a week eating pancakes together, that we walk to church in lock-step behind my parents like baby ducklings, that we play Scrabble or watch football as a family, picking teams and competing for the title of Family Champs. Today, I will eat cereal in my room and watch as my brother and sister waddle behind my parents up the sidewalk and out of view, exultant in my day of reflection. And then I will grab my journal and write about all of the things that are special and sacred and wonderful in my life and all of the things for which I am grateful. The real question though is this: should I tell the truth or should I lie?
When I was little, I asked my father how our family’s birthday tradition had begun and he told me a wonderful story about how as a little boy, he’d gotten into trouble and was banished to his room. He said he couldn’t remember what he’d done to warrant being sent to his room for the day—on his birthday!--but that the experience had been one of absolute joy. He had been anticipating a day fraught with tension and anger—his parents could not afford a birthday party or lavish presents, which was fine with him, but his mother cried each and every year while his father pouted and drank and grew louder and angrier as the day wore on. So, by the time his mother had finally sent him to his room, he was thrilled to escape the family drama and have the rest of the day to himself. His birthday, like mine, came in the fall so he’d sat at his bedroom window and watched the world outside move in tiny increments toward nightfall. He said that for the first time, he could see the wind in the trees rustling the fall leaves; he could see the pattern of the squirrel’s tracks as it ran along the back fence, up a tree, and into its nest. He could finally feel the world around him, breathing, feeling, moving at its own pace and he was mesmerized, hypnotized by its beauty. From that moment on, he promised himself that he would spend each birthday in quiet contemplation of his life and his place in the world. He would use this one day to see the light behind the darkness and be thankful for the blessings he was given.
I often wondered how that had worked out when he’d turned fifteen and got a full-time job to support himself and his mother. His father had walked away one evening when my father was twelve (the same age as me!), never to return. My dad says his father is probably living somewhere upstate, out among the trees and away from the city he hated; my grandmother says her husband came to some bad end and his body is probably buried in a shallow grave in City Park. Neither my dad nor my grandmother give the man much thought so I guess it doesn’t matter where he ended up. We’ve never heard from him and it’s only on my own birthday when I think about the blessings of my family that I think of the empty hole that my grandfather has left behind. Then again, some years I list this as a blessing. This is one of those years.
My father is a successful business man. I’m not exactly sure what he does but I know that he loves his work, that he comes home whistling most nights, that he learned to be successful from old Mr. Galloway who gave my father his first job at the printing company down the block from where my father and grandmother used to live. Word had spread quickly in their small neighborhood that Ethel and Jerry were on their own so one morning on his way to school, Jack Galloway had stopped my father and asked him if he could run a quick errand for him after school.
“I’ll pay you,” Mr. Galloway said.
“I’ll do it!” my father replied.
And so their business relationship had begun. My father delivered flyers and small orders either on foot or on the rickety old bicycle Mr. Galloway kept in the shop for the neighborhood boys he’d recruit for delivery. My father says he loved that old bike, a faded red Schwinn with a huge basket on the front and saddlebags on the back for more precious orders like stationary or wedding invitations. He said that bike could fairly fly down the hills, that he could take his hands off the handlebars and pretend to be up in the clouds, the feeling of which I’m sure was enhanced on those days when the misty fog of early spring or late fall shrouds the city. I can see him as he tells this story, my eyes closed; I can see his legs pumping the pedals and then the bike with him on it disappearing over the rim of a hill, into the mist, flying across the city. My father never talks about what it took to get that monster bicycle back up the hill, but I’m sure it was worth the effort and the climb. I used to think that one day it would be me flying along on an old faded red Schwinn, flying down the misty-shrouded hills into the heart of the city—until I walked downtown with my father and looked at the hill he’d flown down so long ago. The hill was steep and the roads were cracked and rutted. There’s a stop light at the foot of the hill now and he says there are more cars and trucks and people clogging the streets. I have no desire to try it, no need to replicate my father’s crazy fantasy of flight. I’ll take the ferris wheel at Silver City Beach any day.
Anyway, at fifteen my father left school permanently and took the job offered by Mr. Galloway. The faded red Schwinn was manned by another boy and my father worked alongside Mr. Galloway himself, learning the business of printing and the business of business. My father took to it with ease. He left Mr. Galloway sometime in his early twenties and then moved into an even better job sometime after I was born. My father doesn’t talk about his work except to say that he loves his job. He wears a suit to work each day and comes home unruffled, clean and happy. He says he hasn’t gotten his hands dirty in years, an achievement he is proud of, but each time he says that to us as we’re gathered around the kitchen table or the wooden picnic table out back, he reminds us that there is nothing wrong with dirty hands and grease-stained clothes, that they are the badge of honor of a hard-working man—or woman.
“Do what you love, whatever it takes,” he tells us. “Do what makes you happy.”
I wonder what will make me happy. This is what I contemplate on my birthday each year as I sit at my bedroom window and count my blessings. What will make me happy? What is it that will give me joy and make me whistle? And then the question pops up again: should I tell the truth or should I lie?
That may sound like a silly question to you. Why would anyone want to lie to themselves, especially on this day of all days when the point is to contemplate life in all its truthful glory? But I think about this question more and more and not just on my birthday. I think about it every day of my life. And here’s the reason why: my mother says that the only way to be happy in life is to lie to yourself about what life really is. Life is not the everyday slog through hour after hour, day after day of good and bad and somewhere in between. Life is something more that no one can control. Life is pain, heartache, and to hear my mother tell it, more pain. My mother believes that my father isn’t really happy in his job or in his life. He’s just better than most people at pretending that he’s happy.
“Look at what his life has been like,” she said to me late at night when I couldn’t sleep and she found me in the kitchen with just the range light illuminating my bad dreams.
“Your father simply chooses light over dark, happiness over sadness. He has this uncanny ability to turn every horrible thing into something beautiful,” my mother says and I believe her. I get the creepy-crawly feeling that I have inherited my mother’s take on life, that her talent is to turn everything beautiful into something risky or bad or ugly. My mother loves my father’s sensitive nature and secretly hates him for it. My mother is still waiting for my father to fall off of his bike at the bottom of the hill and land screaming in pain in the gutter. That wouldn’t necessarily make my mother happy, but it would make her right. And my mother will choose right over happy any day.
So, am I my father or my mother? Or am I my grandmother who lives in the past, cursing my grandfather as though he still sits in the living room in his recliner drunk and angry? Or am I me, a mix of all three with a dash of something else, a sprinkling of expectation, and a birthday wish full of potential? I suppose only time will tell.
Today is my birthday. It is tradition in our family that we spend this day in quiet contemplation, gathering around us good thoughts and gratitude for all of the blessings in our lives. The day begins earlier than usual, at sunrise if possible, and outside in nature, experiencing the day from its birth to its death at sunset. I know that the day extends to midnight but I never manage to stay awake. Besides, sitting outside after dark without lights scares me just a little. I tried it once a couple of years ago, armed with a flashlight. I prefer to end my day at sunset, with the last vestiges of sunlight disappearing into the deep velvet of the coming night.
My sister Lulu argues constantly that her birthday begins immediately after midnight on the twenty-fifth of May, so she spends twenty-four hours celebrating, ignoring tradition, gamboling around town from bar to bar letting strangers buy her drinks. We don’t see Lulu on the twenty-sixth of May—ever. My father laughs and says that Lulu has her own way of contemplating her blessings: with a tomato juice and tabasco sauce chaser and a bottle of aspirin the day after. I will spend today following family tradition but in my own way, in silence.
The grass was wet under my bare feet as I walked to the old wooden swing in the backyard, the best vantage point at which to see the sun come up through the trees. I wrapped myself in Grandma’s old quilt and snuggled into the corner, resting my head on the arm of the swing, and waited. The houses around me were dark and quiet. It would be at least an hour before even the birds began their morning flights for food so I had plenty of time to contemplate my other birthdays, other peaceful, quiet days.
Sometimes this day is a school day and I am allowed to stay home, but not today. Today is Sunday, a day of family togetherness and escape from the usual harrowing routine of our lives. Today, I am exempt from even that, though, the strict mandate from my father that we spend at least one day a week eating pancakes together, that we walk to church in lock-step behind my parents like baby ducklings, that we play Scrabble or watch football as a family, picking teams and competing for the title of Family Champs. Today, I will eat cereal in my room and watch as my brother and sister waddle behind my parents up the sidewalk and out of view, exultant in my day of reflection. And then I will grab my journal and write about all of the things that are special and sacred and wonderful in my life and all of the things for which I am grateful. The real question though is this: should I tell the truth or should I lie?
When I was little, I asked my father how our family’s birthday tradition had begun and he told me a wonderful story about how as a little boy, he’d gotten into trouble and was banished to his room. He said he couldn’t remember what he’d done to warrant being sent to his room for the day—on his birthday!--but that the experience had been one of absolute joy. He had been anticipating a day fraught with tension and anger—his parents could not afford a birthday party or lavish presents, which was fine with him, but his mother cried each and every year while his father pouted and drank and grew louder and angrier as the day wore on. So, by the time his mother had finally sent him to his room, he was thrilled to escape the family drama and have the rest of the day to himself. His birthday, like mine, came in the fall so he’d sat at his bedroom window and watched the world outside move in tiny increments toward nightfall. He said that for the first time, he could see the wind in the trees rustling the fall leaves; he could see the pattern of the squirrel’s tracks as it ran along the back fence, up a tree, and into its nest. He could finally feel the world around him, breathing, feeling, moving at its own pace and he was mesmerized, hypnotized by its beauty. From that moment on, he promised himself that he would spend each birthday in quiet contemplation of his life and his place in the world. He would use this one day to see the light behind the darkness and be thankful for the blessings he was given.
I often wondered how that had worked out when he’d turned fifteen and got a full-time job to support himself and his mother. His father had walked away one evening when my father was twelve (the same age as me!), never to return. My dad says his father is probably living somewhere upstate, out among the trees and away from the city he hated; my grandmother says her husband came to some bad end and his body is probably buried in a shallow grave in City Park. Neither my dad nor my grandmother give the man much thought so I guess it doesn’t matter where he ended up. We’ve never heard from him and it’s only on my own birthday when I think about the blessings of my family that I think of the empty hole that my grandfather has left behind. Then again, some years I list this as a blessing. This is one of those years.
My father is a successful business man. I’m not exactly sure what he does but I know that he loves his work, that he comes home whistling most nights, that he learned to be successful from old Mr. Galloway who gave my father his first job at the printing company down the block from where my father and grandmother used to live. Word had spread quickly in their small neighborhood that Ethel and Jerry were on their own so one morning on his way to school, Jack Galloway had stopped my father and asked him if he could run a quick errand for him after school.
“I’ll pay you,” Mr. Galloway said.
“I’ll do it!” my father replied.
And so their business relationship had begun. My father delivered flyers and small orders either on foot or on the rickety old bicycle Mr. Galloway kept in the shop for the neighborhood boys he’d recruit for delivery. My father says he loved that old bike, a faded red Schwinn with a huge basket on the front and saddlebags on the back for more precious orders like stationary or wedding invitations. He said that bike could fairly fly down the hills, that he could take his hands off the handlebars and pretend to be up in the clouds, the feeling of which I’m sure was enhanced on those days when the misty fog of early spring or late fall shrouds the city. I can see him as he tells this story, my eyes closed; I can see his legs pumping the pedals and then the bike with him on it disappearing over the rim of a hill, into the mist, flying across the city. My father never talks about what it took to get that monster bicycle back up the hill, but I’m sure it was worth the effort and the climb. I used to think that one day it would be me flying along on an old faded red Schwinn, flying down the misty-shrouded hills into the heart of the city—until I walked downtown with my father and looked at the hill he’d flown down so long ago. The hill was steep and the roads were cracked and rutted. There’s a stop light at the foot of the hill now and he says there are more cars and trucks and people clogging the streets. I have no desire to try it, no need to replicate my father’s crazy fantasy of flight. I’ll take the ferris wheel at Silver City Beach any day.
Anyway, at fifteen my father left school permanently and took the job offered by Mr. Galloway. The faded red Schwinn was manned by another boy and my father worked alongside Mr. Galloway himself, learning the business of printing and the business of business. My father took to it with ease. He left Mr. Galloway sometime in his early twenties and then moved into an even better job sometime after I was born. My father doesn’t talk about his work except to say that he loves his job. He wears a suit to work each day and comes home unruffled, clean and happy. He says he hasn’t gotten his hands dirty in years, an achievement he is proud of, but each time he says that to us as we’re gathered around the kitchen table or the wooden picnic table out back, he reminds us that there is nothing wrong with dirty hands and grease-stained clothes, that they are the badge of honor of a hard-working man—or woman.
“Do what you love, whatever it takes,” he tells us. “Do what makes you happy.”
I wonder what will make me happy. This is what I contemplate on my birthday each year as I sit at my bedroom window and count my blessings. What will make me happy? What is it that will give me joy and make me whistle? And then the question pops up again: should I tell the truth or should I lie?
That may sound like a silly question to you. Why would anyone want to lie to themselves, especially on this day of all days when the point is to contemplate life in all its truthful glory? But I think about this question more and more and not just on my birthday. I think about it every day of my life. And here’s the reason why: my mother says that the only way to be happy in life is to lie to yourself about what life really is. Life is not the everyday slog through hour after hour, day after day of good and bad and somewhere in between. Life is something more that no one can control. Life is pain, heartache, and to hear my mother tell it, more pain. My mother believes that my father isn’t really happy in his job or in his life. He’s just better than most people at pretending that he’s happy.
“Look at what his life has been like,” she said to me late at night when I couldn’t sleep and she found me in the kitchen with just the range light illuminating my bad dreams.
“Your father simply chooses light over dark, happiness over sadness. He has this uncanny ability to turn every horrible thing into something beautiful,” my mother says and I believe her. I get the creepy-crawly feeling that I have inherited my mother’s take on life, that her talent is to turn everything beautiful into something risky or bad or ugly. My mother loves my father’s sensitive nature and secretly hates him for it. My mother is still waiting for my father to fall off of his bike at the bottom of the hill and land screaming in pain in the gutter. That wouldn’t necessarily make my mother happy, but it would make her right. And my mother will choose right over happy any day.
So, am I my father or my mother? Or am I my grandmother who lives in the past, cursing my grandfather as though he still sits in the living room in his recliner drunk and angry? Or am I me, a mix of all three with a dash of something else, a sprinkling of expectation, and a birthday wish full of potential? I suppose only time will tell.