When Birthdays Were Fun

My daughter’s birthday is this week and she’s so excited that she’s practically vibrating with anticipation. She has already given me a list of all the things that she wants for her birthday and as soon as she wakes up in the morning she adds to the list, which proves that she’s also dreaming about presents. When another ad for another toy comes on T.V., she runs into the kitchen and drags me over to watch it—so that I’ll add it to her list.


It’s not just the toys that have her head spinning, it’s also the paper crowns we bought last month for her party. She has taken those paper crowns and built an imaginary party around them that includes a life-size Rapunzel castle with a curly slide that will drop her party guests at a table laden with petite cakes and mini-muffins—all served on teeny tiny pink china. The guest list rivals the royal wedding and includes several boys despite expressing my reservations about inviting Prince Charmings that would rather kick a ball into her tea party than wear knickers and matching silver crowns. Did I also mention that she’s planning on this being a swim party?

This frenzy took me back a few years (alright, a few decades) to times when I was actually excited about my birthday. I remember my sweet sixteen. My friends “kidnapped” me early that morning and took me out for IHOP pancakes smothered in strawberries and whipped cream. At school my locker was decorated and I wore a Miss-America-style sash announcing to anyone who cared that it was, in fact, my birthday. And I had already secured the all important first date since my parents wouldn’t let me date until I was sixteen. I was happy and even the photos of me with puffy eyes sitting in front of a plate of pancakes are a testament to my joy.

So why have birthdays become such drudgery? It probably has something to do with the fact that each additional candle on the cake stands for an additional crows foot, gray hair or varicose vein. It doesn’t help my outlook when I’m expected to plan my own birthday—if you can call it that. Frankly, if I was planning my own birthday it would include a good book, a babysitter, a big bath full of bubbles and sole possession of the remote control for the big T.V. (not the baby-sized one in the kitchen.) But the plan I’m expected to make includes a family friendly dinner (meaning a buffet—and I hate buffets), and a movie that we can all watch together. Bear in mind that my children are all several years apart so we’re generally hunkered down in a movie theater full of crying toddlers watching the latest CGI cartoon.

Still, watching my daughter has made me jealous. I want to be excited about another year and, instead of wishing I could turn back the calendar and erase a few years, I want to look forward to new possibilities. Maybe that’s why kids love birthdays. They dream of what they’re going to do when they’re 5 or 10 or 16 and they can’t wait to live that dream, but somewhere along the line we’ve forgotten to dream of later birthdays when we’re smarter and have a better idea of what will make us happy. I guess it’s time that I invest in a dream of what my life could be this year. Happy Birthday to all of us this year. I’m going to blow the dust off of my daydreaming skills and I hope you do the same. If nothing else, it will make turning a year older just a little more entertaining.