cathyr19355 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cathyr19355) wrote2009-04-16 10:39 pm
cathyr19355) wrote2009-04-16 10:39 pm
Hippo birdie
Today at 9:32 a.m. was the 50th anniversary of my birth.
It is somewhat out of character for me to discuss my birthday, but after half a century of reticence, I figure I should consider changing my tactics.
You see, I always thought of birthdays as the holiday that one's friends should always remember. In fact, I always thought that remembering someone's birthday was one of the things that defined whether somebody was your friend.
Except my friends never did remember my birthday, somehow, when I was a child. (It didn't help that I'm an only child, so there were no siblings to offer appropriatelargesse bribes congratulations.) Maybe that was because I was too proud, or too couth, to say, "Hey, my birthday's on April 16!" But nobody ever asked me when my birthday was, either.
Until I was in college, only my mother consistently remembered my birthday. Even my dad generally screwed up the date (I think he went to his grave believing I'd been born on April 19), and I can't remember him getting me a birthday present, ever. (He was good about Christmas presents, though.)
Birthdays have been much better for me in adulthood. I have a wonderful husband who remembers my birthday; last weekend, he bought me a wonderful romantic birthday dinner at an exclusive, expensive local restaurant. My mother-in-law remembers my birthday consistently too, and sometimes the folk at my office pitch in for a birthday cake or some other communal treat. And at least 3 members of my f-list have remembered my natal day! Thanks again so much all of you.
I don't have much to say about what it feels like to reach my half century. One thing I do have to share is a great poem on that very subject by my favorite poet, Robert Frost. I found it by chance earlier this year while I was looking for something to add to the birthday volume that friends of my sister-in-law (who's also reached her half-century this year) were compiling. I'm not going to use an lj-cut, because it's very short. Here it is.
It is somewhat out of character for me to discuss my birthday, but after half a century of reticence, I figure I should consider changing my tactics.
You see, I always thought of birthdays as the holiday that one's friends should always remember. In fact, I always thought that remembering someone's birthday was one of the things that defined whether somebody was your friend.
Except my friends never did remember my birthday, somehow, when I was a child. (It didn't help that I'm an only child, so there were no siblings to offer appropriate
Until I was in college, only my mother consistently remembered my birthday. Even my dad generally screwed up the date (I think he went to his grave believing I'd been born on April 19), and I can't remember him getting me a birthday present, ever. (He was good about Christmas presents, though.)
Birthdays have been much better for me in adulthood. I have a wonderful husband who remembers my birthday; last weekend, he bought me a wonderful romantic birthday dinner at an exclusive, expensive local restaurant. My mother-in-law remembers my birthday consistently too, and sometimes the folk at my office pitch in for a birthday cake or some other communal treat. And at least 3 members of my f-list have remembered my natal day! Thanks again so much all of you.
I don't have much to say about what it feels like to reach my half century. One thing I do have to share is a great poem on that very subject by my favorite poet, Robert Frost. I found it by chance earlier this year while I was looking for something to add to the birthday volume that friends of my sister-in-law (who's also reached her half-century this year) were compiling. I'm not going to use an lj-cut, because it's very short. Here it is.
What Fifty Said
When I was young my teachers were the old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.
Now when I am old my teachers are the young.
What can't be molded must be cracked and sprung.
I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.
I go to school to youth to learn the future.
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/Eva
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However, we won't be at Worldcon this year. We are going to World Boardgaming Championships instead--lots cheaper, and in some ways more fun for us.
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Somehow, I've never been very attached to celebrating my birthday, so it take an effort for me realize that they can be important to other people and to respond accordingly.
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As an adult, for me, birthdays have been "holidays" that I celebrate *with* friends, rather than the holiday that one's friends should always remember. It's my day to do whatever I want (though I don't take off work on that day). So if someone forgets my birthday, I'm not offended, and if they remember it, I'm pleasantly surprised.
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Well, that's true. But what used to bother me was that people I considered myself to be fairly close to didn't try to remember that day. I didn't expect everyone to do so, not even then.
And I'm a bit unusual in that I have a fairly easy time remembering strings of numbers, if they're not too long, and a date is nothing but a string of numbers. You're quite right that that's not true of most people.
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I know some of the reasons for that, and even sympathize with them, but it still kind of bugs me when I think of it, and he's been dead for decades.
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I suspect that if I'd ever had one big birthday party, or one really special birthday when I was a kid, the whole birthday thing wouldn't mean much to me either. As it is, part of me has always felt I've kind of missed out, somehow, irrational as that sounds.
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I had an okay day on the 16th, which is pretty par for the course for me.
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Ah, but celebrating a birthday with friends *is* a way to remember the birthday.
Yours is probably a better attitude to have. Which is partly why I've always felt a bit selfish for wishing more people would remember my birthday. It seemed wrong to be discontent, even if only a little, because of something so trivial.
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Sometimes I think of doing another gown for the Showcase, but I'm pretty caught up in 10th century costume at the moment. :-)
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Hehe, Tux is a very cute penguin!
Have I told you that I'm a computer science/engineering drop out? I hung about long enough for it to have an influence on my OS choices. Blame learning how to use Unix.
(While the boyfriend has a dual-boot Ubuntu and windows machine, I run Puppy on a very old laptop, while my main computer is a eeepc with Xandros.)
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The machine I'm typing this on runs Ubuntu, because Eric is my sysadmin, he uses Ubuntu and prefers all the machines in the house to run the same OS, since he really hates sysadmining. :-)
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Ah, I would have been 15, in high school, and living on a sheep farm. So no. :(
And Ashley, who was at uni doing his computer science degree at the time says he hadn't actually realised Linux existed. (Strange man!)
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See you at Penguicon?
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