Things That Have Happened on My Birthday

March 30, 2017
Zipolite, Oaxaca, Mexico

I was born at 8:20 am on the morning of March 30, 1949.  It was not as easy birth.  My mother sacrificed her body so I could be born Caesarian.  She told me, more than once, that I was a “blue baby.” I’ve asked my aunt what that meant but she has no recollection of it.  I assume I was oxygen deprived. 

Over the years, I think my mother marveled that I had no long-term health damage.  I know I am fortunate, blessed.  My life could have been something else entirely

because of that deprivation. 

The earliest remembrance of a birthday is when I was six.  WE had just moved back from Florida and were living with my Uncle Francis on Broad Street.  In photos of me I am holding a clown birthday cake.  I still have the recipe in my mother’s old cookbooks.  It’s quite the cake and I seem to be very happy with it.

Those early birthdays flow one to the next.  There is always a party with my brother and cousins.  Typical 1950’s stuff—cake, ice cream, gifts.  Nothing theme related; nothing fancy.

My mother would ask us a few days before what we wanted to eat for our special birthday dinner.  For me, it was always chop-suey. 

Years and years later, when she was quite elderly, I asked her if she’d make me her Christmas applesauce cake.  She did—the last one she ever made. By then it was a tradition that had long passed.

What was fancy, though, as was so my mother who loved holidays and birthdays and any reason to decorated and be festive.  On the morning of our birthdays we’d awake, enter the dining room and find a single place setting had been set of her best china and silver.  Gifts would be on the plate and balloons and garlands would be strung from the chandelier above the table.

When I was nine, in 1958, we had a geyser. Or so we thought did as did the local media.  Hot steam emerged from the ground in the back yard.  When my Dad dug to fnd its source he found the earth hot to touch.  It was late March and the water table was still high and the standing water in the hole was hot enough to boil an egg.

This went on for the few days overlapping my birthday.  It wasn’t a geyser, of course, but we all entertained the idea of the property’s value as a new geological wonder.  It was, however, an overheated gas pipe that happened to run under out property from a home nearby that had operated a bakery many years earlier.  Someone had turned on the valve.  Once it was discovered and the valve turned off, all the drama ended.

Five years later: birthday #14—March 30, 1963.  We are in Florida on a family vacation and my parents have set up a three-day cruise from Miami to Nassau, the Bahamas. When we set sail it’s done in the old-fashioned way with streamers set off by all those sailing—something you now only see in old movies.  The weather is fine—until later that evening when a massive storm sweeps in.  Everyone is forced into staterooms.  Everyone by me.  For some reason, I don’t get sea sick.  Instead, I get lucky and win money in the casino.  No one bother to tell a 14-year-old boy that gambling was illegal.  For some reason, common sense to stop when the slot machines were in my favor.

Like every other teenager, I couldn’t wait to turn 18. In those days, I would be “legal.” That night, March 30, 1967, I walked over to a Mom and Pop grocery store, bought a quart of beer, carried it into Riverside Cemetery, sat on a low-rise mausoleum and drank it all down.

Because I could.  Not because I enjoyed it.  Fortunately, it never set up an alcohol pattern.

In 1978, for my 29^th, I was in Florida. My parents had just retired and I think my brother was there also.  I don’t remember anything special, but I do remember the angst I had over my age. End of the 20^th.  It was the beginning of a year of dread—turning 30 in a year. 

The next year I did turn 30—March 30, 1979.  The day before I saw my cousin John Ladue who was 20 years my senior.  I dumped out my woes.  “Oh, go home and kill yourself right now. Then you’ll always be 29.”

He was joking, of course, but those words have stuck with me since. What a waste of energy dreading a birthday.  Over the years, I’ve shared those words with lots of others who are dreading a particular birthday.

30 was an amazing birthday.  I was still teaching English and every one of my classes had a party.  That year I  got 8 cakes—some many I had to being one home to freeze it.

Twice Easter fell on my birthday and often the day before or after, yet never once do I remember an Easter themed birthday.  It will never happen again as the next time Easter falls on the 30^th will be in 2059.  I hardly expect to be around at 110 years old.

One birthday ran to the next and before I could count to ten I was forty!  Sally Goddard photopied 3” copies of the number 40 and plastered them all over the teachers’ room.   I was surrounded my people who were also turning 40 or who just turned 40, so it was just a fun way of reminding me that it was my turn.  Thanks, Sally!

Steve gathered people together later that weekend for a turkey dinner. I still have the silver

On my 49^th birthday my school graced us with a snow day.  A flood day, actually.  But Whiteface had no flooding and I was free and I spent a glorious day skiing in shorts.  The thermometer at mid station read 80 degrees!

A year later I was on my life’s dream trip around the world.  I’d thought long and hard where I wanted to be spend that day and chose Ayers Rock in Australia.  I went out of my way to get there, but was not disappointed.  I spent the day climbing on and around the rock.  I carried the few cards and gifts I had to the summit and opened them there.  A truly memorable birthday.

At 55, the day I could retire, I called in sick and went to Whiteface to ski. It was a glorious early spring day, cloudless, blue and reasonably warm.  Conditions were spectacular.  It was so spectacular, in fact, that I know I wasn’t the only one who played hookey from work.

At the top of a long, steep slope a massive group of people were waiting.  Below us was a film crew. 

“All of you who called in sick today, ski down now.  We’re shooting an ad.”

Hah!  Almost all of us scooted off that summit as fast as we could.

In 2004 my birthday came in quietly. That night I heard what was obviously a car crash in front of the house.  Some young drunk driver had slammed into a tree.  Luckily, no one was hurt.

I liked to say, later, that that birthday went out with a bang.

I would work for one more birthday.  Susan Ledges threw me a lovely party at school. 

A year later I would be in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.  My first year of retirement.  March 30, 2007.  I turned 58 with a party thrown by the language school I was attending.  It was the first year that anyone had sung Las Manaitas—the traditional Mexican birthday song.

When I turned 60 I wanted to be somewhere special.  That was the winter I spent in South America.  I wound my way to Iguazu Falls that lay on the border of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil and spent two days there.  On the 30^th I bought ever service possible—boat ride, personal video, fantastic dinner.  If I had to turn 60, I might as well have done it with a splash!

A year later I was in Plattsburgh—the last time I’ve been north for my birthday.  My mother was dying, and the staff was as nice as they could be.  They gave me a small stuffed animal.  That evening, though, they turned off my mother’s life support.  It’s not a memory that weighs heavily on me, but I do remember it. The darker side of birthdays.

Since then I decided to celebrate my birthday in a way that neither my father or grandfather did.

Birthdays in my 60’s have been phenomenal.  Apart from two of them, all have been spent in Mexico where “Happy Birthday” is far less sung to me than Las Manaitas.

At 62 I climbed 16,000’ La Nevada outside of Toluca

A year later I headed to the state of Tlaxcala to spend the night at an old, and expensive, ex-hacienda.  As I got out of the bus a hail storm ensued.  “One hail of a birthday,” I later say.

Other years I’ve gone to Acapulco.  Two years ago, at 66, the same age my grandfather was when he died, I para-glided over Acapulco on my birthday.  Cool beans!

This year Gerardo arranged a family birthday celebration for me and his nephew, Derek.  We rented a trajinero in Xochimilco and spent a lovely afternoon cruising the old Aztec canals.

For my actual birthday, I went to the beach again, but this time to Zipolite.  I ate shrimp salad, bought a piece of tres-leches cake and had a massage.  Quiet and reflexive.

I do not like turning 68 and dread 70.  But I must be philosophical about all this.  I have had an extraordinary life and extraordinary birthdays.  I have my health, I have time and I have enough money to enjoy these days. For that I am supremely grateful.

I do not know what the next years will hold, but I can only hold on to each day and give thanks for that.

Happy Birthday, me.  And thank you—all of you—who have had a hand in making past birthdays special.