I was supposed to ride the light train. That’s all I wanted. I didn’t want anyone to make me dinner or buy me flowers or hand me presents. I didn’t expect envelopes of cash or to get drunk, or away from my kid for the entire evening. All I wanted was to ride the light train through the park with my best friends and our applicable kids and wonder in the beauty of trees lit up with holiday merriment.
I didn’t get to ride the train.
The whys aren’t important, and the people who didn’t come matter not in this tale. What matters is only this: I didn’t get to ride that train – the thing I’d been looking forward to for at least a month – and it was totally fine because I? Had the best birthday that I’ve ever had, as far back as my memory will allow me to go before reaching the black void.
No one made me dinner or bought me flowers; there was a single envelope with cash it in, yes, but I got no other presents. And this was all better than fine, because that envelope with a $50 bill in it was given by one of my best friends with the specific intent that I go to Ikea and spend it frivolously on myself, while she babysat my daughter.
I awoke to, and got all day, emails, texts, tweets, DMs and things written on my wall – 82 people I should thank properly that I don’t think I’ll ever really get around to doing. I got called beautiful and gorgeous more times in one day than in the rest of my life. I felt full, proud, lucky, surrounded by fabulous souls.
Yeah, I know that was a little too hippy.
I did go to Ikea. I spent half of that red bill on a little, plain, ready-to-be painted kitchen table that we really needed, completely unfrivolously. So unfrivolously that I was also going to buy a humongous cutting board that would actually fit over all of my counter-top space – so I could use it for baking, when I need to roll out dough and I don’t want little tile indentations – but I put it away, even though it was merely $20, would have reduced a lot of energy and baking avoidance and I not only had $50 to play with, but also $18 kicking around on a gift card, too. I can always use the new table to roll on, right?
I’m not so good at quick transformations.
After collecting my spawn, we headed home to meet some close friends who’d been advised that instead of the train, we would be partaking in the first now-annual tradition of decorating the tree on my birthday.
With Love Actually in the background, my new table’s pieces littering a corner and my old coffee table tossed out by two strong young men for the neighbours to adopt, we accidentally sang All you need is love together, while stringing lights.
We set to work individually, forming paperclips into ornament hangers, handing Zoë the ready-for-the-tree ones and reminding the anal one in the group (who wasn’t me, for once) that it didn’t have to be perfect – it just had to be a tree, in my house, decorated.
Then I made them move it a couple of inches, because it wasn’t centred on the tree skirt.
We rested afterwards, some with champagne, some tea, and all pizza. There wasn’t a cake, but the meal definitely covered the high-calorie-requirement for a birthday celebration.
Then, we split off, leaving me sitting in the dark with only one other soul, staring at my first very-own, from scratch christmas tree of substance and realizing that not only was it the best birthday I’d had, likely ever, but that I finally truly understood what happiness felt like.
