Birthdays

Dora, Popsicle Hill, Softball Lake and Creaky Gate are a few of the places we visited Friday evening to celebrate Addi’s third birthday with family. I must say, I have never been to any of those places! The children, yes, even the nine year old, and the grandparents (two generations) seemed to enjoy the trip. Three sets of parents were also present, but somehow I got the feeling they may have seen these sights before.


The night before we celebrated the birthday of two other family members: Randee (my daughter and Addi’s mom) and Xayphone (my first son-in-law). They were both born on the 30th of the month and celebrate the same number of years. A rather large table in the bar area of our local “country” club was the setting. The nine year old was an angel as always. The two year olds were very well behaved, just a bit more active.

I guess I am getting old since memories of birthdays’ past have been rumbling around in my head lately. My first birthday memories come coupled with those of my cousin, Eddie. Even though I am a full 19 days older than he is, our mothers decided we could celebrate our very own special days at the same time: never on either of our birthdates.

Ruby had the best small paper cut-up cake cookbook. The book contained about a dozen cake shapes. The first cake I remember was a beautiful Barbie doll-like princess! Mom and Ruby were artists. One year Eddie’s cake was “Jack” and mine, you guessed it, was “Jill.” These are the only two birthday cake imagines I carry around with me. However, as a teenager, Ruby loaned me the cookbook. My very best friend, Suzzi, and made just about every cake in the book; there was even a fish with Life Saver scales and one lady ordered a wedding cake from us. Seeing how we did not charge, I guess it was alright to ask two very non-professionals to fix a not-so-spectacular wedding cake.

Another birthday memory haunts my brain every time I hear the word “shit.” You wouldn’t think the words birthday and shit would be housed in the same memory cell, would you? I don’t know which year Eddie and I were celebrating this time, what masterpiece cakes the mommas made, or what presents I received, but it was a special celebration. Eddie’s uncle on his dad’s side brought monstrous, huge speakers to the party. The adults were in the living room visiting, laughing and being rather noisy. Eddie and I were down the short hall talking into the speaker system, trading things verbally. All was well for, oh, ten minutes. Then...

Me: I’ll trade you a pile of shit for a dollar.

The living room went SILENT...

Mom: RANDY LEA!

She was in front of me, yanked me up, told me my birthday was over and put me in a bed. That birthday did not end well.