Birthdays
On my birthday, everything should go my way—though the universe hasn’t always agreed with me on that. I don’t always get what I want. One year, as a kid, I was so convinced that my parents had gotten me a puppy that I believed, improbably, that the dog must be in a too-small box in the garage that had been there forever. We did eventually get a dog, but not then.
The weather should be perfect, and if it is not, it should at least be remarkably bad, enough that it warrants an official complaint: Can you believe it is forty degrees and raining? In May? On my birthday?
At the height of the pandemic, I put on a fancy jumpsuit I hadn’t gotten the occasion to wear, and we got oysters that we ate in a friend’s driveway. We all sat on lawn chairs six feet apart, opening the shells in our laps, taking a life to celebrate mine. Last year, we were drinking negronis in a crowded piazza in Rome, and I realized I couldn’t remember how old I was. I have, on occasion, wielded my birthday as a cudgel. Twice, I have been broken up with on my birthday. Occasionally, it falls on an actual holiday.
For my birthday, we went to my favorite place on the planet, and then C. surprised me with tickets to that night’s Red Sox game. It was a perfect night, though the Sox lost because they never win, at least not when I’m there. A guy a few rows ahead of us had come alone, though it was hard to tell. At some point, he traded jerseys with someone else. Everyone around him was a friend. “It’s his birthday!” someone announced. For a moment, I wanted to tell him it was mine too, but then I thought, no let him have it.
Last week ended up being unexpectedly busy, so I accidentally took two weeks off this newsletter! But I’m back better and older than ever and ready to never stop posting.