It’s my birthday!

Tomorrow, Nov. 5, 2022, is my 74th birthday. Birthdays were never big in my family. Although I've mostly lived a well-provided-for life so far (except for one stint in a smokehouse on Pilottown Road), usually I got dinner out and a cash gift, the dollar amount equal to my age. My sister-in-law, Beverly, lives for her birthday and celebrates what she calls her Birthday Month. I seem to have art openings instead to celebrate my existence and reason for being on this planet.

I had a couple of birthday parties as a child, one at home and one at the Episcopal Church Fellowship Hall in Milton. The one at our house caused my mother to go berserk, because a guest (a brash, well-known, well-heeled man alive back then) put his foot on her sofa, lit a cigarette, dropped ashes all over and burned a hole in the upholstery. During the one at the Fellowship Hall, I had an altercation with a boy from what my mother called a "tough family" during the game of spin the bottle and gave him a black eye!

That was the last of the birthday parties for me. Just give me a fancy dinner out, in a restaurant I usually don't frequent, and my age in cash, which has now become a handful. Don't pick anything out for me! My mother picked out my outfits all during my life at home. She would lay them out on my white chenille bedspread, which left welts all over you if you laid on it long enough, which I never did.

I do love jewelry, but my tastes are bizarre, to say the least. The bigger and gaudier the better. No charm bracelets or life-event marker beads for me. I have left a trail of paintings, and now stories, as a path through the forest of my life, which is easy to follow because it’s sprinkled with glitter.

As a child I wanted weird or unusual gifts, like a subscription to the American Medical Association Journal, a planetarium that projected stars onto the darkened ceiling at night, and a see-through torso of the human body where you filled tubes with different-colored dyes to track the paths of blood through the body. My mother said I was a mystery, the highest compliment she ever paid me. However, my gifts, once received, would mysteriously disappear after three weeks, their shelf-life limit according to my mother. There was a huge, ornate chest in the front hallway by the stairs. This was the clearing station for earmarked gifts that caused what she called clutter. 

My aunt hardly ever gave me things I liked; her gifts included such delights as savings bonds, which are really delayed gratification over many years, or a re-gifted popcorn maker. One year, though, she gave me a stuffed animal that I really loved on sight! (Alright, it was for Christmas, but we're talking about gifts here!) I was never really into stuffed animals or dolls, but "Putsy," as I named her, was a big, soft cat. I hugged her and glowed. There's a photo of me with her that still makes me tear up when I look at it. My mother had given me a hard rubberized Betsy Wetsy doll. I had to pretend to feed it a bottle of milk, which was actually water, by placing the small bottle in a hole in its pursed lips. It had outstretched rubberized arms and a bow in its "Mom-mom" permed hair, just like my mother.

I tried to stealthily put it back in its box of candy cane-striped paper with the tacked-on crinkle bow and close the top. I placed Putsy the cat on my bed in my bed-and-breakfast-like bedroom. Finally, something of mine, for me alone at last! I should have known better. One day soon after, it was gone, with the Betsy Wetsy doll laid in its place! I would have thrown the doll out the window onto Chestnut Street below, but I was too afraid to. I had to look at it for three weeks, like something from an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” Its hard glass eyes opened and shut until its three-week life span was thankfully over, and into the front-hall chest it went.

When I first missed seeing Putsy on my bed, I ran outside to the alley and saw a dump truck heading out. Putsy's outstretched paws pleaded with me as she sat perched on a carton of trash. I stood helplessly in the cloud of dust, crying.

Treasures from the big chest in the hall were always earmarked for an exit. I was told that they had been given to a little poor boy, a student of my mother's. The door of the chest is still broken where she used to lean on it, shoving my possessions in like it was a huge oven, even consuming diaries, love letters, and poems written by me. But there would be more time later, when I was grown, to fill the space on birthdays and Christmas. As I grew older, there would be art openings and dinner out at Bon Appetit, a wonderful French restaurant in Seaford.

After I finished writing the first draft of this article, something happened to me that has changed my mind about birthday parties. My husband and I were invited to a regular monthly Class of 1966 get-together on Oct. 20. It turned out to be an early surprise birthday celebration for me! They really went all out and scoured the area, borrowing/collecting my paintings, some from many years ago. They even had a Christmas tree adorned with photographs of me, some as far back as kindergarten, as well as a wonderful potluck meal, a frozen ice cream birthday cake, and my classmates singing "Happy Birthday" to me!

I was admittedly a little weird in high school, but here was love at last! Thanks to one and all who attended, particularly Bonnie Hudson, Kay Jennings, Kelly Pettyjohn for hosting, and Billie Lynn Thompson. Also, thanks to Carol Ann Moore for bringing me the pole beans I love so much! My faith in the magic of birthday parties has been restored. As Sally Field said when she finally received her Oscar, "You like me; you really like me!"