Reflections on another birthday...

            My phone rang early this morning.   It was Hayden calling on his way to Dulles Airport to catch his flight to Dhaka, Bangladesh for a work trip. 

 “Happy Birthday, Mom…what will you do to celebrate today?”

“We’ll go for brunch in downtown Asheville,” I told him feeling lonesome that we would be not together.

As if reading my mind, he said, “we’ll plan to celebrate when you come visit in a few weeks.”  Perfect, I thought.   I was remembering my birthday celebration last year when we went to Washington D.C. to celebrate with Hayden, Jess, and Austin.

Birthday celebration in Washington on Sept. 2, 1017

Today has been a day of being grateful for the many lovely cards with special sentiments written in them that sit on the counter downstairs. I like to read and reread them. On the dining room table is a stunning bouquet of  yellow, purple and white dahlias from my friend Anne’s garden left on my doorstep while we were out. White roses are opening up in a silver vase on the coffee table. A gift from Art who knows I love roses.   Phone calls from my brothers filled the afternoon (we don’t talk so often) as birthdays were always very important in our family.  A phone call came from my niece Megan who was almost born on my birthday but held off till two days later…we are each other’s most loyal birthday supporters. We are  fellow Virgos and very much alike in many ways. Even my "English sister", Jenny never forgets to call from London.  “It’s what we always do on our birthdays…” she reminded me when we talked late yesterday on Skype. My email account is full of loving notes from friends who are far away. My Facebook Timeline has many  good wishes from acquaintances, neighbors, and people I haven’t seen in years because this what Facebook friends do in this age of technology. I do it too, although it feels too easy somehow and doesn’t require much thought.  

At my age, people tend to write things like “where have the years gone?” and other clichés about how quickly our lives pass by. I notice that and wonder if we said that as much when we were younger.  I would rather forget the numbers in my age and simply think about where I am today - recalling rich memories of long ago birthday celebrations and enjoy people in my life who are still there for me.

Every year I am reminded that what I miss most on my birthday is the phone call that always came from my parents no matter where I was living. Until they were both gone, now four years ago.  Each would get on an extension of the landline  while Mom would do most of the talking and Dad listened for a little while and then wandered off. Mother’s call was always followed by a letter where she, who was the memoirist in the family, lovingly remembered the day I was born in Santiago, Chile in 1945.  She was 25 and barely spoke a word of Spanish. She loved to tell me how I was born in a maternity clinic in downtown Santiago and even though she didn’t understand a word of what the nurses said to her she always related that they were “terribly kind”.  The doctor who delivered me was German and knew some English.  She reminded me every year that I was born on VJ Day – Victory Over Japan. It was the day the treaty was signed with Japan that ended the war in the Pacific.  Chileans, on the opposite side of the world from Japan, were celebrating. The staff at the clinic told Mother I must be called Victoria for “victory”. She told me she didn’t follow that suggestion “because I was afraid you’d go through life being a Vicky and not Victoria”.  I think she was right…Victoria is far more regal than plain Vicky.   Instead I became Kristina Ingrid…. Kristina, being a very common South American name was convenient, however not spelled with a K. I went through my childhood introducing myself in perfect Spanish … “me llamo Kristina con k”. My name is Kristina with a k.  (K is not a letter used in Spanish.) 

Like my Mother, I’ve become the memoirist now. Growing up in Buenos Aires, Argentina my Mother stayed at home. She was the parent who planned the many creative birthday celebrations for my brothers and me.  One year she had a birthday party for me where we made puppets out of paper sacks.  We then put on a puppet show on the back porch of our house where we often played theater with the neighborhood children and acted out shows we made up. Another year, I invited girlfriends to the Confiteria Paris, a tea restaurant in downtown Buenos Aires with a décor reminiscent of Europe in the late 1800’s.  There were Baroque looking elaborate gold mirrors, white marble floors, and waiters in white jackets and bow ties. Pastries were served on silver tier trays and tea in china cups. I wore my favorite Best & Co. turquoise corduroy princess-style dress with my black patent leather Mary Jane shoes and white lace anklets.  Other birthdays I was taken to the Teatro Colon, the opera house in Buenos Aires to see the ballet.  I would sit on the edge of my velvet seat in my party dress riveted to the ballerinas performing on the stage.  At the end of each act, the enormous red velvet curtains trimmed in heavy gold braid  were pulled shut by stage hands dressed as footmen…white wigs, stockings and all!  

I rarely spent birthdays in the US but when I was 8 we had “home leave” from Argentina and spent an entire summer in Iowa with my grandparents.  Being the eldest grandchild and because my grandmother saw me so infrequently, she wanted to give me a birthday party.  I remember her telling me, “I know your birthday is not until September, and this is July, but would you like to have a party now.”  Of course, I said yes and much to her surprise I went all over her neighborhood in Des Moines inviting any children I saw.  She was somewhat taken aback that I rounded up as many children as I did but I thought it was great having a July birthday!

Birthdays for me growing up in South America always came in the spring and the few days of September were not special in any way. But when I moved back to the U.S. and was grown up my birthday was always in, on, or around Labor Day, one of the biggest holidays of the year.  When I worked in public schools it often fell on the first day of school or on a teacher work day and so it became somewhat forgotten.  Now it doesn’t matter anymore except for wanting to spend it with family.  Last year we were in Washington D.C. to celebrate with Austin.  Having a grandson lends a whole new dimension to birthdays and I hadn’t had quite as much excitement and a real cake and even candles for a long time.  I was reminded that reliving birthdays through the eyes of children can be one of the most fun ways to celebrate.

 Birthday celebration in Washington DC, Sept. 2, 1017

Licking the plate clean with Austin...

My special day is almost behind me and yet in a few weeks we’ll be in Washington for one more celebration. This time I will have my helper, Austin, to lick the icing and help me blow out some candles as he loves to do. Then I will stop celebrating and simply get on with the life and all that is coming my way this next year.