BIRTHDAYS

And can we call it a Birthmonth?!

Sitting by the phone, waiting for it to ring because I knew my kids and parents would call me at some point, I began looking through pictures.

Frame after frame. And one thought kept coming to mind … Who was that old lady?

For months, I had been trying to follow my own advice to take more pictures. But let me tell you, there’s nothing like a picture of yourself to make you question all your rules. I’ve been fairly outspoken against things like Botox and plastic surgery. Generally, I don’t like the expression “anti-aging” because aging is inevitable! It’s going to happen to all of us. Fighting it by not taking pictures, for example, won’t stop it. But secretly, I still wish I could slow it down a bit.

My son Derek and I have the same birthday. When we were talking recently, he commented that, for years, I didn’t have a birthday because we were celebrating his. I don’t remember thinking about it like that. We were celebrating OUR birthday … with a pirate scavenger hunt at the park, parties at the roller rink, and surfing at the beach. We had several parties at the wakeboard center, and once we went to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Maybe he was right.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had some great parties—milestone birthdays with friends and family, and thankfully, I have the pictures to prove it. There’s just always that underlying, nagging, tick … tick … tick … of the clock. As he got older, I got older!

I’ve discovered a method to stop counting and that’s to celebrate a birth month—as in celebrating for an entire month. When you use this method, you don’t have to name the number of years—56^th birthday. Using an age range is perfectly acceptable. And I’m in the under-sixty group. Somehow, that sounds younger. I like this approach. For one entire month, I give myself permission to eat cake regularly, call friends and go out, go out again when they call me to celebrate, and the best part … shopping.

Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash

When the kids were little, I would ask them to circle items that they liked in a catalog or the newspaper. I would purchase some of the items and wrap them so that on their birthday or Christmas they were surprised and excited to open their presents. As they grew into teenagers, they stopped circling items in the catalogs because we went shopping together. They picked out what they wanted. I paid and wrapped the treasures for the party. And it drove my husband crazy! He thought it was so dumb to first take them shopping and then bother wrapping the presents for them. There was no surprise—they knew what they were getting. For him, it took the fun out of it all. Maybe that’s because he rarely came on the shopping trips with us.

The joy of shopping has changed for me without the kids to shop with. And thanks to Amazon, when I do go to the mall, I find it impossible not to wonder if I could find the perfect color and size at a better price online. This year on my birthday, I stayed in my PJ’s all day, sipped coffee, and then savored cocktails while filling my cart.

It was a nice way to spend MY birthday.

My new book, Empty Mess: Rediscovering Life After Kids is available now!