Celebrating My Birthday Bigtime

    As a kid, I envied my brother. Our Aunt Mary always made a big deal over his birthday being on St. Ann’s Day. “Sharing a birthday with Jesus’ grandmother is really special,” she’d say. And because he was so special, she always tucked a St. Ann holy card or medal in his birthday car. And me? All I ever got was a plain old birthday card.
   Then there was my dad, a New Years baby. Every year we got to stay up till midnight when he and our next door neighbor shot off their shotguns and we kids burned sparklers in the backyard. Now that’s a birthday!
   My mother’s birthday, March 31, was in and of itself no big deal. But she had this bizarre sense of humor that always caught people off guard and we all joked that she even caught everyone off guard by not waiting for April Fool’s Day to be born.
   When I got married, nothing changed. My stepdaughter, Chrisa, was born on November 23 and my son Ian, November 26. Some years their special day fell on Thanksgiving, but no matter what they were caught up in the spirit of the holiday. We made cakes shaped like turkeys, pilgrims and cornucopias. And to this day I still buy Chrisa some kind of turkey trinket.
   Leif was born on Earth Day, April 22. When he was really little we’d go to the Earth Day Festival at Piedmont Park and let that be part of his birthday celebration. And he got his share of special cakes, too. I was especially proud of the earth cake I made by baking two cakes in mixing bowls and jamming them together with icing. One year we put a different spin on it by ordering a bakery cake with a painting of the earth. I placed a little Viking ship on it  (like Leif Erickson’s) so he could relate to his ancestors’ exploration of the planet.
   Our youngest, Loren, was born on October 15. Though it wasn’t a holiday, it was close enough to Columbus Day that most years he could enjoy a three-day weekend as part of his birthday celebration.
   And even my husband who was born on May 24 has an interesting connection to his big day. He shares his birthday with Nicholai Copernicus. OK, maybe I’m stretching it a bit here, but I find it apropos that as an engineer, he entered the world on the same date as a famous scientist. And when you think about it, he has more in common with Copernicus than my brother has with Jesus’ grandmother.
   But at least he was born on a day when the world commemorated something. On my birthday the world commemorated nothing. No one. Nada.
   But then, they say you should never wish too hard for something because you just might get it. I guess that’s true…because tomorrow is my birthday.

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