Happy Birthday to Me

It's just another birthday, right?  No one ever said that the day should be all about me and that I should get to do whatever I want to do.  Or did they?  Was I raised thinking that I was extra special on my birthday?  I think I was.  And I think millions of other Americans were raised that way, too.  It might be okay if you spend the rest of your life in America.  But it's an eye-opening day when you wake up in another country on your birthday and suddenly realize it's just like any other day and the only celebrating that's going to happen is ONLY going to happen if it's planned by you.

I learned a bit about birthdays in other parts of the world when I was teaching English to refugees.  We were doing a lesson on how to fill out forms.  One of the blanks was for your birthday.  Walking around the back of the room I noticed that three Somali girls had all written January 1 as their birthdate.  I smiled thinking that they'd had no idea what they were filling out or they would have known better than to copy a birthdate.  As I worked my way to the front of the room I noticed a few more January 1 birthdays.   Knowing that the front row wasn't copying from the back row,  I decided to ask how many of them were born on January 1.  Three quarters of the students raised their hands.  That's when their lesson on filling out forms became my lesson on immigration.

The first time most of them had ever seen a form was at the immigration table in the refugee camp.  Many couldn't read or write which meant someone else had to fill out the forms for them.  And for many, it was the first time they'd ever been asked for their birthdate.  Most didn't know when they were born so the immigration officers simply wrote January 1. This was the first place their birthday had been officially recorded.  There were no other records.  Birthdays in small African villages weren't important.  Their 1st birthdays didn't start with $3 invitations to a fabulous birthday party at a bar serving beer and wine to their parents' friends.  And their 7th birthdays weren't $350 dollar events in a jumpy gym.  Their birthdays came and went with no one knowing.

That's the year I decided to spend my 39th birthday in Ethiopia.  I know I didn't have to go to Ethiopia to wake up in a place where no one knew it was my birthday.  I could have done that in Tennessee.  But in Ethiopia it wouldn't be easy to connect to the internet to check for emails, I wouldn't know if my mailbox (the kind attached to the house) would be full or empty and I wouldn't be able to check my cell phone for messages.  I thought it would be a good place to try celebrating my birthday alone.  In addition, I was 7 years younger in Ethiopia.  Their calendar is 7 years earlier than ours.  In 2004 it was only 1997.  I was 32 years old again.  All signs seemed to say that Ethiopia would be the perfect place to spend my first expectation-free birthday. So, off I went.

I'd passed the week leading up to my birthday with no fanfare.  At home, the week before my birthday (three weeks before, really) I'd have already had several lunch dates and received gifts and birthday cards.  But in Ethiopia my birthday was approaching unnoticed.  

Then, on April 28 I met an English girl.  It was impossible to resist telling her that my birthday was the next day.  I'm American.  We talk about our birthdays.  The next morning I woke and found a lovely handwritten note and was invited for tea and a torte in the afternoon.  So much for going solo.  Thanks to my big mouth and the English girl, I'd ruined my chance of seeing how it felt to have a birthday that was just like any other day.

Until moving to Italy, that is. I remember the first time a friend said he had to go to the store to buy stuff to take to his office for his birthday.  I said, "YOU have to buy stuff for YOUR birthday?"  And he explained that in Italy, it's the birthday person that does the offering.  In my opinion that's kind of like saying COME CELEBRATE ME.  And then if no one comes to eat your store-bought cookies or drink your Fanta how do you feel?  I guess that's how we did it in grade school in America, but there was no alternative.  The teacher couldn't do it for 30 students, so it really was the birthday kid's responsibility.  At least it was the moms that did the shopping and made the cakes.  There was still some element of being taken care.

Being responsible for your own good time on your birthday in Italy reminds me of one of my worst birthdays in Chicago.  I was the Social Director at a retirement home.  When a resident had a birthday, I wrote Happy Birthday with curly q's and flowers on the activity board..  When it was another employee's birthday, I bought a cake (and probably Fanta) and we all met in the front office after lunch and sang happy birthday.  It was supposed to be a surprise, but when it was your birthday you knew it was going to happen because it happened for all of the employees' birthdays.  That is, until it was the Social Director's birthday.  On my birthday, the lunch hour came and went.  In the afternoon someone came in my office and asked if we were having cake later.  I thought they were kidding.  I kept waiting and waiting for the dumb excuse that I had to go to the front office and then they'd all be there ready to surprise me and sing.  But it never happened.  No kidding.  At the end of the day the receptionist asked why I hadn't bought a cake for my birthday.  She was serious and I was shocked.  Who knows?  Maybe she thought I was from Italy, the land of do-it-yourself birthdays.

Well, I wasn't Italian then and I'm not Italian now.  I'm an American that wants to be celebrated on my birthday.  I don't need balloons and jumpy gyms.  But I'd sure love a frosted cake and some birthday candles.  And I'd appreciate not having to make the cake myself.  Unfortunately, I don't think Italy is going to be the place to make this wish come true.   But I've got a year to try to accept the fact that if I want to whoop it up, I'm the one that will have to do the whooping.  And just in case the day is drawing near and I'm finding it hard to swallow the orange Fanta and come-celebrate-me-festa, I've decided to begin my search for an English girl in Italy.  At least then I'll be sure to have a torte and tea on my next birthday.