My friends are my estate
April 24, 2008 – 9:56 pmI would have to say that while I haven’t ever devalued my birthday, in the past few years, growing older has made me become a little more realistic about my birthday. The haunting bitter words of my ex still ring in my ears "It’s just another day, like any other." and while they are bitter, they are sadly, true. For nearly everyone else in the world, today was just another day. A Thursday. A weekday, a workday, a school day. A few lucky kids got to enjoy ‘Take your child to work day’, as it happened to have fallen on today, but for the most part, it was another day.
But my family and friends made it more for me today. My husband woke me at 5 am, too excited to wait much longer to give me my birthday gift. And now, not even a year into our marriage, I have a right hand diamond ring. It’s simple and very much my taste. I arrived to school, my phone buzzing left and right with birthday greetings and I did my best to legally, safely respond to them. The girls at school had covered my station with cookies and cupcakes and soon, there was a huge hoagy sandwich joining them. I joined my parents for a lovely lunch at Gray’s on the Park and spent most of the afternoon, practicing up do’s. Kate dropped by with balloons and a sweet Gerber daisy arrangement and Mom dropped off a beautiful birthday cake at the house. Mike and I had a nice dinner out together and soon, Kate will be picking me up for a quick late night happy hour drink with Aja.
It’s little things like that, along with the occasional "Happy Birthday wish from classmates, or a jolly text from so many friends that kept me searching for old text messages to delete, to make room for the birthday ones. And then . . . to come home to the comments on my page, the emails and word from Heather and Jessica at my old job that I would be seeing them on Saturday. . . . it’s all so sweet.
Sometimes, when I pop onto a page of Myspace friend to wish them a happy birthday when I hardly talk to them throughout the year, I feel a little silly. I wonder if it really matters to them that I remembered or noticed and responded. But today, when I saw all these friends wishing me a happy day, it really made me grin. Sometimes in life, you get to feeling so small, you wonder if the world can really even see you.
I feel like I was really seen today. Thank you for your kind words. I know this is going to be another amazing year.
