A Happy Birthday

I’ve never had strong feelings about getting older. The inexplicable workings of my mind make my age tick up as of January 1, so by the time my birthday rolls around, I’ve already had ten months to get used to a new number. (It just occurred to me that my brain is only in sync with reality for a sixth of the year. Weird, yes, but not worth changing, either.) Not that I’d care much even if I didn’t pull this annual mental trick. As I see it, every year successfully completed is like a new badge on my imaginary badge scarf, which I, ever the Girl Guide, wear with an immense deal of pride.

It’s the whole concept of celebrating that’s usually a huge source of anxiety. I don’t have to self-reflect more than a little to figure out why I get so bogged down trying to sort out what the “right” way to mark a special occasion is. I also don’t have to do any deep analysis to conclude that assigning tremendous weight and significance to making a few days perfect (whatever that means) rather than using that time and attention to enjoy/tolerate all the days in between has the inevitable result of turning something I genuinely love into a counterproductive and soul-sucking endeavour. All I want is to be festive in my own joyous, messy, idiosyncratic way—burnt cookies, quirky decorations, warbled singing, etc.—without feeling any sense of obligation or being hard on myself because everyone on Instagram is doing it better than I am.

I took a few steps toward breaking free of the holidays-have-to-be-the-best-ever-or-else mentality last Christmas. I managed to take a few more steps in that direction as my birthday approached and I decided that the fact that I was physically and psychologically able to do something grand for it didn’t mean that I was obliged to do so. It took me a bit to reach this conclusion. For a week or so, I told myself that if I didn’t throw a huge party or go on a trip to Hawaii or something I wouldn’t get an A in a core subject: being happy I was born and have made it to this point relatively intact. When I slowed my brain down a touch and thought it through, however, I realized that more than an elaborate theme party I’d exhaust myself planning and then not fully enjoy because I was too busy worrying that I hadn’t purchased enough refreshments, I wanted my birthday to be a quieter celebration and reflection of what gives my life real meaning.

What that meant to me was quality time with people I love. And so we planned a little road trip to a nearby city to have coffee with dear family friends who have been, and continue to be, incredibly important to me. Last Saturday, my birthday, my husband and I went to our local farmers’ market in the morning. I tasted my first paw-paw, a fruit my husband tried while visiting my sister- and brother-in-law in NC and has wanted me to try too but that’s almost impossible to find in Toronto, and the very same husband bought me a cute little winter squash I fell in love with. We picked up a car just before lunch and made the ninety-minute drive to Kitchener, stopping at my favourite fabric store on the way. Seeing our friends waiting at the coffee shop we’d chosen as a meeting place filled me with more birthday joy than the piñata and ice-cream cake I’d set my heart on possibly could have. (Please note that I haven’t nixed the piñata and ice-cream cake idea. I’m thinking they can be a [Canadian] Thanksgiving or Halloween or random weekend thing.) We spent a few hours catching up with our loved ones, who’d brought incredibly gorgeous flowers and an overly generous assortment of gifts, and we drove back to Toronto riding a high.

It was exactly the right way to ease into the last year of a decade that hasn’t been the kindest to me. It was the right way to keep settling into this beautiful grey zone in which I’m slowly learning to be kind(er) to myself, figuring out who I am both in myself and in the world. Things don’t need to be a constant fiesta worthy of social media: they just need to be. And they need to include, at some point, a piñata and an ice-cream cake.