Today is my birthday. Tuesday, I mean, when I’m writing this, not Thursday, newspaper day — don’t rush out and bake me a cake.
You’re too late!
Like all sane adults, I do hate birthdays on the one hand, in a certain way: Who wants to be another year closer to death? My birthday arrives just as the winter gloom is setting in, the heavy clouds moving in from the northwest, the flowers in the yard reduced to hips and bare stalks, a dreary season that further drains the occasion of cheer. November birthdays force a stark existential question: What is there to look forward to, with the glory of October colors behind us and spring still so far ahead? (Research proposal: Are people born in the bonny month of May more congenitally cheerful?)
But on the other hand, in a different way, I love birthdays. Lurv ’em. And this is specifically because I am childish and can’t help but look forward like a golden retriever to the prospect of treats. I remain indefatigably and bouncily upbeat when a yellow cake with chocolate frosting may be coming my way (possibly accompanied by a present or two wrapped in colorful, cheap wrapping paper). I’m like that excited dog when its owner reaches for the bag of Purina Beggin’ Strips. I bounce off the floor, all four paws airborne.
Some of my best childhood memories, in a childhood somewhat notable otherwise for an excess of opportunities to ponder the melancholy of human existence, are of birthday parties. Walking up Main Street, skipping along, my small right hand held by my father’s big left mitt, followed by a parade of eight or nine birthday guests, marching on foot to the East Hampton cinema to see “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (in which bratty Violet Beauregarde got turned into a giant, bloated blueberry). A white-haired lady coming in the opposite direction toward us on the sidewalk made way for the herd of children and turned to remark to my father, “Are they all yours?” This seemed the height of adult drollery to me. I felt, for some reason, terribly proud.
We would have a piñata, though the memory of the piñata is tainted by the memory of that one birthday party when one of my very bad older brothers (who deserved to be turned into a blueberry) grabbed the piñata stick before anyone else had a turn and destroyed the piñata with one fatal, ferocious, first blow. I ran away from my own party as the hard candies scattered on the driveway and hid to cry in the branches of the tree on the library lawn next door that we called the Pouting Tree, because it seemed the ideal spot for running away, but not too far, and pouting just out of reach of parental arms, so you had to be coaxed down.
My son and daughter were treated to fairly epic birthday parties when they were little. Do you know anyone who has a tendency to avoid all of life’s cares and woes (the pile of unpaid bills on the bedside table, ahem, or the basement cluttered with crates of record albums ruined four years before by a flood) by diving headfirst down a deep rabbit hole of planning and/or shopping in an obsessive way, devoting all spare minutes to the hunt for . . . whatever it is? I’m one of those people. For years, when Nettie and Teddy were small, I’d devote a full month or two of labor each calendar year — apiece, once for July and once for October — to visualizing and organizing an elaborate theme for their birthday celebrations.
The themes included the Candy Party for Nettie, when she was turning 3. I paid the Flying Fox Bake Shop in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, to create a vanilla cake with all sorts of candies (Sour Patch, Snickers, Whoppers) hidden in a chamber that had been hollowed out inside, so when the cake was cut, the candy spilled out.
You could get away with a candy birthday theme in Nova Scotia, but this never would have flown here in East Hampton; East Hampton moms would have sent me highly critical emails about a correlation between sugar and cancer, or refused to let their children attend. We played Pin the Bubblegum Bubble on the Donkey and a game called Pass the Parcel. You, the mom, wrapped a prize in 20 or 25 sheets of wrapping paper, and had the kids sit on the floor in a circle; they passed the parcel around as each kid ripped off one sheet; eventually getting down to reveal the prize, which in this case included a set of candy-scented markers, the Candy Land board game, and a giant, oversize Hershey bar longer than the little girls’ outstretched arms.
Also, for example, we threw a Firefighter Party for Teddy when he was turning 3 and had been living in North America for only about a year. His smile is a beam of pure happiness in all the photographs. We held the Firefighter Party in the meeting room of the Shelburne Volunteer Fire Department hall, a perk because I was a member, and the boys’ great thrill was getting to climb all over the trucks. Teddy wore a red felt crown decorated with fire engines, and the guests all got red plastic helmets. There were firefighter-themed blow-outs and paper cups, and red juice in clear plastic bottles stripped of their labels and decorated to look like extinguishers.
Half the pleasure of a birthday theme is in the paper goods. I am capable of spending three or four hours choosing just the right handmade, die-cut paper birthday invitation on Etsy.com, an elephant with legs that move, wearing a cone-shaped hat, or a paper astronaut with a paper helmet that can be slipped off to reveal the date and time.
The pinnacle of my career as a kids’ party planner was the Harry Potter Party of 2015, when Nettie turned 8. We were back home on Accabonac Road by then and their dad made the most fantastic flying contraption for a Quidditch game: It was a huge, rideable broom made of a stout branch and thick bundle of twigs, strung between the trees in such a way that you flew upward as you attempted to toss the Quaffle through a hoop.
When the guests arrived for the Harry Potter Party, the legend of which lives on in family lore, they were invited to sit on a stool among the hydrangeas in the front yard and don the Sorting Hat. We had fixed a hidden walkie-talkie under the seat of the stool so the voice of the Sorting Hat could assign them a house. It was all Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw; no one was Slytherin. The voice of the Sorting Hat was provided by a dear friend, the noted broadcaster and podcast legend Sarah Koenig, hiding in the kitchen and watching through the window. The loot bags at this event were perfection: Everyone got a Golden Snitch, Chocolate Frogs, and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans. We had a treasure hunt for the Goblet of Fire.
Other memorable parties included the Knights Party, for which we decorated the warm room of the Shelburne ice-skating rink with castles; the My Little Pony Party (overnight at a modest motel with a pool), and a Big Cats Party, for which tiger and lion paw prints in white housepaint were stamped all up and down Charlotte Lane, creating a trail of clues to lead a horde of toddlers to a hidden treasure chest filled with miniature stuffed cats.
Well, this morning I was woken up by a text from my son, who is a bit on the laconic side: “Happy birthday to mom.” And the Diptyque candle company of France has emailed me a code for the free 70-gram candle of my choice with my next purchase. At least I’m still here!