Happy Birthday to You

Every day is someone’s birthday, and isn’t that just lovely?

Birthdays are a big thing in our house, and big birthdays are a bigger thing.

I’m not sure how it came to be that way, because I know it’s not true of everybody’s birthday. I know people for whom a birthday can pass by with barely a celebration. They might get a card and a gift from their nearest and dearest, but nothing much else. For us, birthdays are almost bigger than Christmas… And we do pretty spectacular Christmases.

My birthday falls on Christmas Eve, which is odd. It has always been odd, but it is what it is. The husband makes a big deal of it, and I love that he does. My last birthday was a pretty surreal event. My father died on the 9th of December, which was also his youngest grandson’s eighteenth birthday. There was a kind of symmetry in that, and it meant that the entire family was together. It must have been a strange experience for my nephew, but he dealt with it wonderfully well. 

The husband and I have an anniversary on the 10th, but it rather passed us by.

The husband the younger dort,
 who have birthdays this week

I hosted my father’s funeral on the 19th of December with family and friends in attendance, and we are a big family. It was sad, but also quite lovely. The 20th of December would have been my father’s eighty-third birthday. Four days later I had a birthday on the day before Christmas, and on the 27th of December my sister got married. Those three weeks were some of the strangest I have lived through. My birthday, in particular, passed in a strange, surreal haze.

It is birthday season again. Both of the dorts, and the husband have their birthdays in October. The husband turns fifty on Monday. It’s a big birthday and one I’m very much looking forward to. I want it to be full of stuff and things, and more than anything I want it to be a warm and happy celebration. We like to gift-give, so there is always a birthday sack the equivalent of any Santa sack in any house in the land… It’s tricky, though, to buy gifts for the husband, and it seems to get trickier with every year that passes. He’s not a hard man to please, but his interests are diverse, specific and sometimes fleeting.

The younger dort has her birthday the day before the husband, so it’s all go, no stop! She’s always a pleasure to surprise and a delight to party with… Besides, she makes lists. She doesn’t ever expect anything that’s on the lists, and she’s always more than delighted when I take a tangent, but it’s good to have guidelines.

The older dort will get the best gift of the year this year, though, and it’s a gift that I couldn’t possibly give her… It’s a gift that no one on Earth could possibly give her, and one that must be incredibly rare. She’s a very lucky woman… I rather envy her. 

This year, the older dort turns 25, her birthday falls on the 25th, and this year, the 25th will be 25 hours long! How cool is that?

For any and all of you who know the husband, and I’m guessing that’s quite a lot of you, come Monday, you know what to do. Smiles.