Wednesday December 10, 2008

In less than a week, I will turn 31 years old. I don’t feel old and in the grand scheme of life, I’m not. Even though I feel like I’ve grown up by YEARS worth in the last year!

The weird thing about this birthday is, I barely even notice that it’s coming up. I haven’t even made a list of desired gifts. I usually start counting down to my birthday about a month before it arrives and make a birthday/Christmas list (because they are 9 days apart) sometime in October. I’ve done none of this so far this year. In fact, I don’t plan on making a list for either my birthday or for Christmas. I honestly don’t want anything but money or for my husband to take me out to dinner or get me flowers. We’ve both been so blessed this year with wedding gifts that I can’t think of any material thing I need or want. I plan on using my birthday and Christmas money to pay for a scrapbooking retreat I’m going on in January.

Like I said though, up until now birthdays have been a huge deal to me. When I was a little kid, we were given choices for each thing. We could have a kid party or we could have some other sort of celebration. We could either go out for dinner or mom would make whatever we wanted. I usually chose to go out to eat, don’t know why. Mom’s a great cook but I loved to go out to restaurants.

As an adult, the choices didn’t cease but since I lived in a different state, they were different. I was given the choice between having flowers sent to my office or having the money that the flowers would cost sent to me. I was near broke but I always chose the flowers. After all, they were pretty and when they were delivered to my office that told everyone it was my birthday! What could be better than that?

Another “birthday memory” is always getting a single rose with pink tinges, usually it was in the floral arrangement that my parents sent. I also always got a white cake with white icing and pink roses.

When I turned 30 last year, it was a huge deal to me. I had wanted to throw a big party but finances prevented that. Then John was going to take me to my first real casino but snow prevented that. He still made it special by getting me a pumpkin cake and making me dinner.

This year, my birthday is on a Tuesday, it’s not a special year and it’s not even on my proverbial “radar screen.” But I still plan on making it special in some way because a birthday is like a New Year. It’s a chance to celebrate living another year, including the year’s successes and failures. It’s also a chance to look forward to the year to come.