Conversation I had with Mike last week:
Me: Where do you want to go for your birthday eve?
Him: That’s not a thing.
Me: What’s not a thing?
Him: Birthday eve. That’s not a thing.
Me: Of course it’s a thing.
Him: No, it’s not a thing.
Me: I will never understand you people with siblings.
We have a long standing understanding in our home that I celebrate my birthday for an entire week or more. Generally, my celebration involves declarations like, “It’s my birthday, I’m not doing the dishes,” but it also includes allowing myself special treats like cupcakes for breakfast. I firmly believe in more robust celebrations for birthday eve, the actual birth day, and then the day after, which is the first full day of one’s new age. Being Mike’s first birthday without the teenager at home, I felt it was time he to embraced the three day celebration format. Being a middle child who married an only child who together had an only child, he thought the three day format was a bit silly.
Here’s the thing – I see too many people taking life too seriously. I am often one of those individuals taking life too seriously. There are unread emails in my inbox. I’m overdue in a status update. I have several business stakeholders I haven’t met with yet today. I haven’t returned a few phone calls. I have a mountain of laundry at home and the carpet needs to be vacuumed. My list of home improvements continue to grow as nothing gets taken off. My weekends are spoken for and I don’t think I have a free moment until June 14…of 2019. I put too much on myself and I don’t make time for fun, except when it comes to celebrating.
We try to celebrate a lot as a family unit. This was a bit of fun Mike brought into our relationship. No matter how big or small, we celebrated. We’ve celebrate the loss of teeth (and the sprouting of new ones), the start of a sports season, the completion of a project, the wrap up of a school play, the start of a new job, the end of a hard school or work week, the anniversaries of births, deaths, love, the beauty of a Southern spring day, the emptiness of the laundry basket, and just about any other reason we could find. If we can declare a celebration of some sort, we try to declare it.
By no means are each celebrations big affairs. We may shout a brief “hoorah!!” but we don’t really need more. It is merely an act of gratitude and accomplishment. It is an acknowledgment of life and a gratefulness we have people with us on our little journey through it. Maybe my only child status influences or sparks my desire to celebrate. My immediate families have been small my entire life. I am blessed though to have large extended families and a strong network of friends who have been a part of many of my little celebrations, whether they realize it or not, and that is something worth celebrating.
For your next birthday eve or for the next joy that stumbles into your life, maybe you to can shout a little “hoorah!” You might just like taking a small moment to acknowledge it and celebrate, whatever it is.
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