Another Birthday Come & Gone…

I used to be a huge fan of birthdays. How can you not be a fan of birthdays when you’re growing up? You get a special breakfast, and presents before school! You hand snacks out to your class so that everyone knows that it’s your special day. Mom makes what you want for supper, and there’s cake & ice cream and POP! 

This day is all about ME, yo.

Then, on the weekend, 17 of your closest friends descend on your house and shower you with awesome presents, like stickers, and hair bows, and books, and barbies. And on top of everything else, you get a treat bag when they leave. 

A few years trickle by and you get a little older. And you get a special breakfast, but you’re kind of past handing out cupcakes to your classmates – not that the boys wouldn’t greedily shove them down their throats, but jeez, mom, it’s embarassing when you’re in grade 10! So besides a couple friends, no one really knows that it’s your birthday. And your parents have meetings that night and your siblings are at choir practice, so why don’t we just schedule your birthday dinner for the weekend, when everyone’s going to be around? Instead of 17 friends, you have 3 friends over, and you get a few solid gifts (because let’s be honest, the three who are over actually know what you like & want!), and you all stay up until 5am watching Titanic, Romeo & Juliet, and Usual Suspects (with a rollerblading break at 3am). 
Then, you cross that line, the one where you rent a house with friends. And no one makes you breakfast. And everyone leaves at 6:30am to work in the greenhouse. And you make Kraft Dinner for supper, but then your roomie comes home with a tub of ice cream & you watch Notting Hill for the 23rd time.
You can see how a person’s birthday enthusiasm could dry up a little as the years went on, right? It’s not like birthdays cease to be special, and it’s not like anyone has really let me down, it’s just the gradual realization that the entire world does not, in fact, revolve around me – not even for one day of the year. And now, here I am, a grown up and a parent of two. I’m lucky enough to be staying at home with the kids right now, but that means that I don’t even have colleagues to share a birthday lunch break with. I usually make sure that I have Eggo waffles in the house for birthdays (because they’re the only appropriate birthday breakfast), but this year, I let myself down on my own birthday. I completely blanked. So, at 8:10am, Hendrik & I jumped into the van, pulled onto the road, and scraped the front of our van along the bumper of our tenant’s work truck. Happy birthday to me! We got the waffles, raced home, and ate before my babysitting charge arrived. The day was spent serving the needs of the children, baking a cake that they could eat for dessert (even though a friend was bringing some over for us to enjoy in the evening after the kiddos were in bed!), and cleaning the house in preparation for the impending ‘party’ guests. The cake was a (delicious) flop and the house was really only nominally clean. 
I suppose, what I’m saying, is that after the build-up of childhood birthdays, birthdays as a responsible adult & parent are more or less ordinary days…and sometimes, it would be fun to have 17 friends over to shower you with presents and play silly party games and get prizes and treat bags and eat an entire month’s worth of sugar in four hours…to have everyone who passed you in the hall or on the street stop & wish you happy birthday. 
But, while my whole day didn’t end up being Pomp & Circumstance (far from it!), my loving husband made a delicious dinner after his long day of work, friends came over to share the meal, another friend baked an incredibly delicious & rich chocolate cake just for me, and more friends came over to toast another year of my life. (I didn’t even have to put any children to bed!) So, here’s to adulthood, and here’s to being thankful for another year of life with a loving husband, (mostly) wonderful kids, and supportive friends (near & far). 

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Jenn vanOosten

I live in Hamilton, Ontario, and love my city. I'm a Netflixer, choral music geek, bookworm, inventor of recipes (I take Artistic Licence on EVERYTHING that I make), wife of one, mother of two, and owner of a neurotic Schnauzer. I respect people who respect others. I love good food that's well done, but my favourite lunch is KD & hotdogs. With ketchup. I'm addicted to Clearance Shopping. I will ALWAYS get the product that I want at the price that I want, eventually.

Latest posts by Jenn vanOosten (see all)

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