Birthday Memories

Birthdays are a funny thing. As a kid you get excited because you can't wait to get older. For a short period of time in your early adult years your birthday is a opportunity to have fun and you're not as concerned with age. At some point, you start to dread getting older and birthdays don't seem as fun.

Growing up poor meant we didn't do much for birthdays in our family. I do remember having a party for my birthday one time in all those years. Several school friends came over and I felt really special until my dad embarrassed me in front of everyone. He had a toy he was playing with - a battery operated helicopter attached by wire to a controller. All it could really do was go up or down based on running the propeller. Dad thought it would be fun to land it on my head during the birthday party. The helicopter landed gently on the top of my head and proceeded to start wrapping my hair around the propeller. You can imagine the rest...

Other than that one very interesting attempt at a party, the rest of the birthdays in our house were pretty low key. The birthday kid always got to choose their cake flavor. I always picked cherry chip cake with chocolate frosting. We also had a say in what we ate for dinner. Mom finally got tired of me always asking for chicken Kiev so she later limited what we could choose. I just liked being special for one day a year.

I was so sure that everyone else had better birthdays than I did. Imagine my surprise when I got married and found that my husband's family wasn't terribly different in how they celebrated. Any event in a Navajo family is celebrated with food. Birthdays for them were a great excuse to bring the family together. It was more than just dinner, though, and ended up being the type of family celebration that was better than decorations and presents.

With my own kids I tried to do the parties. We had some fun here and there and I even organized one heck of a Magic the Gathering party with a mini tournament and kids designing their own Magic cards. In the end it really wasn't my thing. The parties I still like the most are the big birthday cookouts with my husband's family and the gatherings at work where everyone just swaps stories.

Today is my husband's birthday and I'm sure he wishes he could be back home, having a big family cookout. I'm doing my best to make this a great birthday for him. Spam and eggs for breakfast, gifts both practical and fun, and then Navajo (or White Chick) tacos for dinner. Just spending the day together has been fun already.

What are your favorite birthday memories?