Birthdays
January is the month when I “observe” my birthday, so, what’s not to like about that ‘special’ day, as some people label it? As the actual day of my birth in 1946 was clouded in undisguised shame for the lady who donated me my life, I was not heralded into the world with unabated joy. The good lady had apparently celebrated the end of WW2 in 1945 with her own more intimate merriment, and a feisty little sperm intruded to potentially ruin her life and reputation at that time. Indeed, the shock of her pregnancy must have triggered an unparalleled calamity for her and her family. Thus, she spent some of the next nine months living in a mother and baby home to conceal the evidence, and resent every moment of the ordeal, and me along with it. As was the tradition then, I was spirited away from her directly after birth, never to feel her company again. Put into a cot, to gurgle away in solitary confinement, I was only lifted out for feeds and mopping up. Similar to the destiny of a homeless puppy, I waited to be finally adopted by a lady with the maternal instincts of a garden rake. She instantly whisked me, her adopted son and her long-suffering husband down to London, where no one should divine that she wasn’t the birth mother. I was the accessory she required to feel like a conventional wife and mother.
After 78 birthdays, this naturally recurring annual happening transpires without a single effort on my part. I don’t encourage it, welcome it or advertise it and neither is it within my power to prevent it, postpone it or reassign it to a different function. However, as the years escalate, the extensive scrolling required to find my birth year, each time I fill out a form online becomes more time-consuming. Of course, it goes with the territory, along with all the other things that mark one as a ‘timeworn mortal’. Thanks to Facebook, the event is more widely covered than previous decades, and it’s nice of otherwise unknown people to send a digital message however remote.
When I was a child, it verged on a humiliation in class, when the teacher asked each pupil on their “special day”, what they received in the way of presents. My brother usually received a new bike and had a large birthday party in July, but January birthdays didn’t translate into the same deluxe practice. And a bike was out of the question for a growing girl on account of the sexual hazards of sporting a uniform skirt. Since my mother never missed a chance to economize with me in any way possible, regardless of living in the largest house in the village, she had a special tradition of giving me my school uniform for my birthday. My school pals found this extraordinary, as did I, but at least there was a certain consistency in the ‘gift’, and I was spared any exciting premonitions.
As I matured, I came to realise that this “birthday” business was not all it was cracked up to be. The illusion of being special on that day, faded into oblivion. Neither of my Swiss husbands enjoyed the art of giving, so in the fullness of time, I became familiarised with buying my own little indulgencies. I daresay, one or other would have splashed out on a saucepan if I had needed one, but I always pipped them to the post. In fact, the Swiss have a curious ritual of shaking your hand and offering congratulations on the day, but I never quite grasped how I had done anything to deserve this ritual gesture. Thank goodness for my lovely son, who has grown up with strong British genes and spoils me intensely on my birthday
A singularity of birthdays is the art of assigning everyone to a star sign and then tagging all citizens into twelve categories according to which month they were born. Any effort to predict the course of someone’s life, let alone their day, is surely purely academic. These horoscopes have never interested me in the slightest, so I remain blissfully ignorant of whatever some stargazer feels should befall me. Astrologers have absorbed the art of being as vague as possible to generate prophecies that fit snugly into your specific setting.
Over the years, there have been increased efforts to eliminate Christmas, Easter and other religious celebrations, to avoid offending people with other beliefs. In their place, the UK has adopted several American festivities for Halloween, Carnival and other such events. However, the institution of birthdays has remained resilient to any changes and will survive into many future generations. A birthday is your own personal landmark to be relished in whatever way you choose. It’s a licence to be special for a day, and even I get a twang of joy at the thought!
Photo: pexels / Rene Asmussen