Birthdays to Remember

It’s my birthday today. I am almost excited about it. I have had so many shitty ones that I normally dread it. Last year hubby made it a really nice day so this year I am looking forward to it for the first time in a very long time.

After the alarm went off this morning I laid in bed for a few minutes and thought about my birthday. There are only a few that I actually remember.

10th – I turned double digits. I got to have a birthday party – my first and only as a kid. I remember thinking that it would be 6 years until I could get my driver’s license, but I don’t remember my 16th birthday.

15th – I turned 15 on the 15th. We had a VCR by then and I got to pick out movies to watch. I picked Basket Case – a horror movie about a deformed Siamese twin.

22nd – None of the others stand out from High School or university. On my 22nd, I was in Comox, BC. It was my first posting after I graduated from University. I had spent the summer in St Jean, Quebec on French language training and had arrived in BC in late August. By the fall, all the summer people were gone and there were only 8-10 of us living on base. We all went out for Chinese food. It was the first time I felt like I belonged somewhere.

24th – Posted to Cold Lake, Alberta and living in barracks. The year before I was on course in Borden and a bunch of us got posted to Cold Lake together. One of the guys got sent to Halifax on course so I would hang out with his wife and three boys in the evenings and on weekends to help out. For my birthday she had made me a cake and the boys sang me happy birthday. It felt so nice to have a family when I was so far away from my own.

30th – I know I should remember it because it is a milestone, but what makes this one stand out is that instead of a party, on the day of my birthday we actually had all of the kids' friends from the neighborhood (but none of the parents) come in after supper and help me blow the candles out on the cake. So I remember all the kids laughing in the kitchen. The only other thing I remember is Mother Downing telling me how awesome my thirties are going to be compared to my twenties. Well she was so wrong. My thirties sucked ass big time. When I hit 37 things started to turn around so at least I will end the decade on a good note.

Five birthdays stand out in a good way out of 39. That is a really sucky ratio, but I am looking forward to improving it in the years to come.