I am never allowed to forget that at my fourth birthday party I made clear my expectation to my mother and the gathered guests that I expected to win all the games. The logic was clear and to my mind (still) fair: it was my birthday and so I should win. When this wasn’t passed into law, there was some anger on my part. Why should Kelly and Kate take home the pass-the-parcel first prize, and gain recognition for being fastest at eating donuts hanging from a string? Apparently in my pretty white swirly dress with its pink satin sash, wielding a wooden spoon for a game of blind man’s buff I was destined to lose, I was quite the little despot – though ineffectual.
I persist in trying to force people into recognising my birthday, even though the numbers get less and less joyous
To this day I have not shed my authoritarian approach to birthdays, but getting older has forced me to think more about my relationship with the annual event. The phrase ‘too much birthday’ springs to mind – a piece of modern parlance that has emerged from the same strange place as ‘you do you’ and ‘because… reasons’. Still, it has some use. Every year, I find I still have what can best be described as either ‘too much birthday’ or frankly ‘too little birthday’. As my mature, normal friends quietly go about their business, never guilt-tripping me for forgetting their day, as if it couldn’t matter less (perhaps it couldn’t?), it’s clear that I’m an outlier.
My behaviour manifests through a big salad of feelings, plans and expectations that never end up satisfying. First, because it’s not fair to expect people to remember an obscure date in the summer (apart from one’s oldest friends, who will always remember because when you’re five or nine or 12 it’s the flagship currency of friendship).
Second, because the reality is never that great, and hosting is a gruelling test. Birthday parties as a child, by contrast, are both a matter of course and provide sheer pleasure in a way that grown-ups very rarely experience – in part because, unlike children, we are used to buying treats for ourselves as much as we want and it’s harder to find transport in dangling donuts, pools, slip ’n’ slides or roller-rinks. In my adult experience, no matter how opulent the bash, or glittering the company, after the age of about 37, a party without a sense of strain and desire to get home to watch Netflix in bed is hard to come by, if it exists at all.
And yet I persist in trying to force people into recognising my birthday, even though the numbers get less and less joyous. Turning 40 two years ago was a painful mix of the compulsorily festive and internally depressing. I have not yet recovered from attempting to get 50 people in the communal garden accessible by a dungeon-like door down some stairs three houses along from my building, with enough champagne to last all night (a pledge I had made on invitations in a gust of exuberance far beyond my means) and snacks that didn’t wilt in the heat.
This year was my 42nd and before I knew it I was saying yes to my parents’ well-meaning offer to throw me a small gathering on a brief trip over from the US. This went off with well-wishes and lovely gifts from admirably energetic and kindly friends, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that it was all something of a strain, for my parents, for my friends, for their children and frankly for me. After they left, I hoovered up cake and scones and wondered what to do with myself.
It was, I fear, too much birthday – as I should have anticipated, given that what I actually want (but can’t have) is to lie in bed eating Twix bars and reading a trashy novel for hours, unbothered by the human race. Two days later was my real birthday, and I spent most of it moping, with a few crying spells, feeling somehow empty and joyless, and also unloved – why was I traipsing around with the baby like it was any other day, drinking the same extra-shot iced latte? There was still time to rectify this, but how? With food? With drink? For a mother with a birthday on a Monday, those are pretty much the only options, when really, it’s time – the endless syllables of recorded time, which so horrified an embattled Macbeth – is the only thing that one really wants.
Perhaps the alternative to too much or too little birthday is no birthday. Remove any expectation, let go of all childhood associations, once and for all. Glancing on Reddit and Mumsnet, I see this is probably the normal thing to do – quite a few women in my situation in life write things like Mumsnet’s BeaRF75: ‘I hate my own birthday, and ignore it. I think making a fuss about birthdays for adults is a bit silly.’ But this feels wrong too. The inner child is just the inner person. We can discipline her all we like, but trying to pretend she doesn’t exist is a form of neglect.
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