Double Nickels

There’s so much to unpack here: The Car Craft MACHINE T-shirt (thanks to my car obsessed brother), the candle in the Ernie’s Pizza (best in New Haven despite what you’ve heard), the Ukrainian carved coffee table and embroidered pillow, the bangs….enough said.

There is a three year old voicemail from my late mother still saved on my iPhone. It is brief, a classic example of my mother’s limited patience for needing to leave a message after the tone. She simply couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t pick up your phone.

OK, this is your mother. I wanted to wish you a happy birthday but you can call me back any time. Bye.

I saved this message and a few others so I could revisit them occasionally to hear my mother’s voice. On this particular message, the last one before she passed away, her voice is barely above a whisper and she is clearly short of breath. I didn’t know it at the time, but if I had listened more closely and been more curious, I might have realized that there was something going on in her 90-year old lungs and ultimately she took her last shallow breath just a few months later. I’m grateful I have this birthday message to listen to as I celebrate my birthday today.

My mother celebrated her birthday a week after mine, so we always shared fun moments in July together. I would usually bring her flowers and a sweet treat on her special day. She would give me some money so that I could treat myself to a manicure. Figuring out what to get me for a birthday gift was always a struggle for my Mom, and for the last few years of her life, she really didn’t get out of the house much to shop. It didn’t matter. I needed nothing, and having her call me (as I typically called her the other 364 days of the year) was its own special treat.

When I was little, there were summer backyard parties or lunches at our favorite seafood restaurant with aunts and cousins or, as pictured above, a special pizza “cake” at my grandmothers house. A summer birthday can be rough for a kid. In my case, there were no friends around as everyone was scattered. There weren’t any fancy day camps or pool clubs. Boredom abounded and temperatures were steamy and and uncomfortable in inner-city New Haven where I grew up.

But July 17th brought an exciting pocket of joy in mid-summer. The best birthday celebrations were the “pool parties” my Mom would cobble together in our small, mostly concrete backyard. The gathering included a hard plastic pool, cracks patched with duct tape and filled with the garden hose, sliced watermelon, Country Time lemonade in a big pitcher and - the best part - pixie stick candies. My cousins would come over, and the neighborhood kids, and maybe a few children of my mother’s friends. One year, during my Barbie doll phase (which lasted a few years longer than was probably healthy), there was a cake with a doll’s plastic torso sticking out of the top, the cake itself taking the shape of her long ball gown skirt.

Today, I’ll celebrate with a ladies lunch hosted by my dearest friend, then a few of us will play some mah jong. I’ll speak to my older kids and my siblings, my in-laws and a few long distance friends. My husband will take me for a lovely dinner. I know from lived experience that I’ll receive calls and texts and funny cards from far and wide, and I’ll be so grateful for all of it. It really is wonderful, and such a lucky thing, to feel loved and seen on your birthday, the one day all year that is just for you. It’s a day that allows you to look back on the year you’ve just lived - with all of its successes and failures, highs and lows - and to look ahead with hope and optimism.

I’m celebrating 55 trips around the sun today - a fact that stared me in the face as I sorted through old photos searching for a birthday memory to share with this essay. It seems impossible that I am on the very shady side of 50 but alas, here we are. Of course, it’s better than the alternative. I know I’m lucky to have my health, and to have lived these many years, years that are not given to everyone, including my beloved cousin Gregory, whom we lost when he was in his 40’s. He’s the cutie with the bowl haircut and party hat pictured above smiling at me in my wooden highchair. He’d have been delighted to see 55 and I would have been delighted to celebrate it with him.

So cheers to being double nickels. Cheers to party hats, cake and pixie sticks. Cheers to receiving special voicemail and text messages and saving them forever. Cheers to celebrating with the people we love, and remembering those who loved, supported and celebrated us all along the way.