birthday month

In my family, we call it a birthday month. For some, it starts on the first day of the month of our birthday, like my mom whose birthday is the last day of June. For others, like me and my sister, it starts a full calendar month beforehand. Our birthdays are in the first weeks of our months. It simply wouldn’t be fair otherwise. 

We have a groupchat where we say goodnight every night. My dad started it with my sister and me and my grandma after my grandpa died. My mom found out about it months later and demanded to be added. But it’s like she doesn’t get the rules all the way. She was on a stretch for a while where she sent a buck-tooth glasses-wearing emoji every night, while we were all sending “Goodnight, I love you”’s. It was almost like she was protesting being left out. Which is fair. But it’s been three years.

In the groupchat, we are expected to keep an eye out for impending birthdays and wish the special person a happy birthday month, week, and day. On the day, we call each other. I sing very loudly. As loudly and obnoxiously as I can because that’s how I like it when people sing to me. Mid-pandemic, my sister and I tried to sing happy birthday to our mom over a laggy facetime. We each kept trying to synch up with the other, and the song slowed itself down gradually, like a train chugging to a stop. 

I have the reputation of being the most birthday obsessed person in our birthday obsessed family. It is a reputation I earned fair and square. In retrospect, I can see how I became this way.  I’ve seen the footage from my first birthday party. I am the firstborn daughter of a toy lover; my mom used to manage a Toys R Us in south Florida, before they all went under. My favorite story of hers from this time is that she went into the backroom and changed the clothes and shoes to make her dream cabbage patch kid, at the time when they were selling out like crazy. At my first birthday, I am her cabbage patch kid come to life, surrounded by my very own toy store’s worth of presents. 

I remember the birthday that I got my American Girl Doll. I wanted one so badly that I would cut out their life-size pictures from the catalog and wrap them up in blankets. It makes sense to save the doll itself for the grand finale, but less so when all of the other presents are doll-sized clothes. So I knew what was coming, but my parents did the whole, “Ok, that’s everything, what do you say?” and then the “Wait a second, what’s this now?” 

I think they realized that this strategy wouldn’t last forever. When I turned 16, I begged and begged for an iPod. They woke me up early before school to give it to me because they knew that one of my friends was planning to give me an iTunes gift card. Those are more fun to use when you already  know you have an iPod. 

My last birthday that I remember being really excited for was my 18th. I knew I was leaving childhood. At 18, you can vote, and you can buy a Zippo lighter from the gas station. It turns out that you can buy a Zippo at pretty much any age, which I was incredibly disappointed to learn when I wasn’t carded that night.

My AP government teacher told me on my birthday that I was officially in the age of the majority. (He used to make me buy him sprite and sticky buns in the teacher’s lounge; this may have been a problematic relationship.) I woke up to my period. I froze my marching band ass off at our very last football game of the season, which we lost, exactly like all the others. The next day, my parents took me and my best friend to a casino for a breakfast buffet. A waitress brought out mimosas and poinsettias, and my parents let us take our own glasses. That night, I cater-waitered my French teacher’s wedding. He wasn’t supposed to have students there, but my girl scout troop leader manipulated the situation so that we weren’t technically guests. That was my last special birthday. 

Twenty-one fell on a Tuesday in college, the year that I had 12-hour long Tuesdays. An early class, my library job, a seminar, night class. My parents drove the hour and a half to have a quick dinner with me at my favorite hibachi restaurant. My mom decorated the holder from a six pack of beer and filled it with airplane shots of liquor.  I made it to the grocery store as it was closing and bought a case of neon pink and sickeningly sweet Jamaican Me Happys. The clerk almost didn’t card me. I held out my license anyway, hoping she would notice it was my birthday. 

My roommates bought me cupcakes and a card with a stuffed cactus on it. I was so exhausted that I assumed only one of them had done it but later came to understand that they had gone together to shop for me and had split the bill. My thanking only one of them while the other was standing right there is something that haunts me to this day. I shut them out of my room so I could call my boyfriend, which is all I’d really wanted to do all day. Later, I went out and apologized for giving one roommate all the credit. I’m breaking out in hives just thinking about this now. 

I found a Google doc from when I lived in Austin. I’d used it to draft a letter to my mom telling her what I wanted for my birthday. It starts, “I hadn’t realized my birthday is coming up so soon, which I’m sure you know, is surprising.” What a cry for help. I remember this birthday vividly. I hated living there. I didn’t want a birthday all alone. But I was pretending to love it. I am sad for that version of myself. She is trying so hard to feel okay, but she’s leaving breadcrumbs of the truth. She wants her mom to decipher that sentence and make it all better. 

And then I asked for a whole bunch of shit and gave very specific directions of where to get it and how to get it to me, and I cringe and laugh because even when I am miserable, I am still, and always will be, the number one birthday bitch.