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(Adult) Birthday Lessons
My godson, one of my favorite people in the entire world, turned nine years old yesterday. And he, by all accounts, didn’t especially care much. Beyond a wistful request to come visit him soon, he had no requests for presents. He was positively apathetic when it came to a party—until he realized it would interfere with indoor football (that is, soccer) practice, and then fought adamantly against the idea. He did not want to share cupcakes at recess, nor go out to dinner. In fact, other than asking if Aunt Katrina would be back from her trip from Berlin in time to help him cut the cake, he gave no indication last week that he wanted anything special done at all.
In short, he is just like I was at his age. And how I am today.
I suppose there was a time when I was excited by the thought of cake and balloons and presents and parties, but I never put much stock in them after a certain age. It was nice to know I was growing older, that I wasn’t always going to be a little kid, but I never saw the point in making a big deal out of birthdays. In fact, I’ve started to ignore them altogether. Because I was born in May, and am usually stuck inside taking a final (or am stuck inside studying for one), the day usually goes unmarked.
At least when it’s come to my own birthday, anyway. When it comes to my godson, it’s not so easy to let “his” day pass uncelebrated.
Suddenly, I see why my parents tried so hard to throw me the birthday parties I didn’t want, the ones I fought against even when I didn’t have football practice. I understand with an aching clarity why they wanted to mark the anniversary of their child coming into the world, and do it memorably. I know why they wanted to celebrate each of the years gone by. Even while I still disagree about the things they essentially forced on me, I suddenly get that desire, the overwhelming way it emerges from all the way down in your gut and is just barely controllable.
Because even if he’s “only” your godson, it suddenly hits you hard—very hard, very randomly, and all at once. He’s growing, he’s asking questions and forming his own opinions and plans, he’s disrupting your innocent little castles in the air, he’s slowly becoming the adult he so desperately has wanted to become for so long. He’s asserting his wonderful, incredible, infuriating, unpredictable, eminently lovable individuality. And he’s not going to stop just because you want him to.
Nor should he, if it were somehow made possible; I know that. But it becomes important to mark time somehow. His time, that is. Not necessarily with balloons or parties or presents, but somehow—no matter how quietly. Because the days and weeks and months add up into years. And because the person he is will soon be replaced by the person he will become, and because the person he will become will show you the person you will have grown into.
And because I was in his shoes not that very long ago, and that in itself is worth remembering.
Sweetheart, I love you. I hope you enjoy being nine even more than you enjoyed being eight.
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