Wednesday, June 13, 2012

It's My Birthday, It's Your Birthday, It's Somebody's Birthday Somewhere!

My name is Signe and I'm a celebration-aholic.
A beach walk celebrates the
completion of a long day

Dinner to celebrate our
friends' visit from Sweden
My husband Eric points this out constantly, and I'm lucky he and my Framily (friends & family)  indulge me, because there is simply nothing I love more than a reason to celebrate something. Holidays, birthdays, and baby showers are obvious no-brainers. Celebration! But what about the other vacant and disused days in the calendar year? Those lonely, lonely Wednesdays in, say, March? (March itself being a dismal month that nobody ever celebrates - excluding the birthday-ers - save if it's mentioned in regard to Julius Caesar getting stabbed to ribbons in the Senate two thousand years ago.) Hasn't March been through enough? Doesn't she deserve a little celebration? So I look at this uncontrollable reflex to celebrate things as merely doing my part. Birthdays and Anniversaries seem to ache for lavish dinners, whether made at home or dining out, trips to a foreign country or even a campy road trip with a book-on-cd. Long day at the office? Let's celebrate being done with work (for the day) by having a glass of red wine and talking while we cook dinner. It's Friday? Happy Hour!! I wrote one full page today: bubble bath. Full moons and things like Summer Solstice? Why not?! We've been celebrating those events for thousands of years. Bring on the bonfire and let's give thanks to our ancestors and make some sparkly sort of punch.

I suppose celebrations are on the brain because today is in fact my birthday, and as I grow older, I find my relationship to the celebration of life events is changing, of course. Obviously at 32, it's no longer about the cake, the party, or the gifts. (Though I'm embarrassed to say I probably out grew this later than some. When I was a little girl and would wish on a star, I would wish that wrapped presents would start falling from the sky, so.....cakes and parties and gifts are nice when you can come by them!) But now it's about the phone call I know I'll get first thing in the morning from my mother. My husband hugging me in the kitchen and calling me his birthday girl. The birthday card coming across the long miles from my sister in Seattle - the one that fills both pages of the card with handwriting and a message that never ceases in moving me to tears in it's meaning. The sweet pings of birthday wishes from friends and readers on Facebook and Twitter from across the globe: a reflection of the incredible people I've met in my life and the rainbow variety of paths that they walk.
Celebrating Mary Alice Monroe's
new book at the SC Aquarium

It's about going to see "Snow White and the Huntsman" and eating mozzarella sticks for dinner.

So yes. I'm a celebration-aholic and proud of it. Because celebration reminds us to live in the moment. It reminds us to take the time to connect, appreciate and reach out to the people we love in our lives. It provides us with a much-needed timeout from the weights and stresses of the challenges of being grown-ups, and being human, giving us a blissful pocket of time to simply be delighted.

So if there's one thing I could encourage you to do, it'd be to remember when you have a bad day, to raise a glass, light a candle, make a wish, and blow it out. Because it's bound to be somebody's birthday somewhere. And life is too glorious and too brief an affair to not celebrate every moment we have to spend.
Why not celebrate four days early?
Sunday's early birthday cookout with The Butler Family.
(With sweet, sweet, wee Grey Butler.)

3 comments:

  1. Agreed! I should embrace my own celebration-aholic nature. In fact, I think I'll start tonight by picking up a bottle of wine on my way home! It's my 2 month anniversary of joining Mary Kay, after all. ;) So happy anniversary to me and happy birthday to you!!

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  2. Yes! Celebration-aholic's unite!! Happy Mary Kay-iversary, Connie!

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