Birthdays
Today is my 39th birthday, my first birthday without my mom.
I’m technically an adult, so it feels like it shouldn’t really affect me this much. But it does.
She’s been here for me my whole entire life, every single birthday. She’s the reason I even exist and have a birthday. It feels surreal going into this day without her for the first time ever in my life. I can’t help but think back today on all my memories with her from my birthdays over the years – from the birthdays of my childhood that she worked so hard to make special, to the birthdays of recent years that looked very different.
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When I was born, we lived in a little apartment in Waterbury. We moved around a lot & finally settled back in Waterbury at my grandma’s house when I was 4. I don’t remember any of those birthdays, they just exist in the faded photos of parties & cakes, my mom by my side as I blew out the candles and she helped me cut the cake.
When I was in kindergarten, I remember having a birthday party at my grandma’s house and being able to invite all my cousins and friends and it being SO much fun. During probably one of the saddest and hardest times of my mom’s life, just months after getting divorced, she managed to give me one of my first happy memories with a simple backyard birthday party.
When I was 6 or 7, she threw me a birthday party at…MCDONALDS! It blows my mind that this is a thing that people used to do. I remember it being super fun, playing games outside on the lawn at the McDonalds in our town and just eating a shit ton of food. It seems ridiculous to me now that I would have requested this, and even crazier that my mom actually made it happen.
All throughout elementary school, she brought ice cream to school on my birthday instead of the usual cupcakes everyone else did. And not just like a bag of Hoodsie cups. We’d go to the store and pick out 3 or 4 types of ice cream – I remember one year picking a 4th of July red white and blue ice cream from Friendly’s that turned a sickly looking gray color when you mixed the flavors together. It was great. We’d get whipped cream, sprinkles, chocolate AND strawberry syrup, candy and whatever else caught our eye at the store for toppings. She’d lug it all into school in the most gigantic red Igloo cooler and spend the afternoon serving me and all of my classmates ice cream sundaes. I loved it. I still feel guilty about the year I told her she didn’t have to come anymore because I was getting too old and was stupidly embarrassed by it.
As I grew up, the memories become more blurry. Who knows what I did on my birthdays as a teenager, but I do know she always did something for me - got me a present and a card, took me out to dinner, shopping, whatever my moody teenage self would allow.
As time went on, many years she wouldn’t even get me a “birthday” present and we didn’t do anything special, but she’d always get me little gifts here and there throughout the year whenever she saw something she thought I’d like. All the star jewelry and Beatles gear. Little treasures just for me that I would never even think of buying for myself, that I see and immediately think of her, that I am so grateful for.
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Two years ago, I had tickets to go see Paul McCartney at Fenway Park for my 37th birthday. One of the first real outings post-kid and post-Covid. But life had other plans. They had just found my mom’s first tumor and ended up scheduling her for surgery on June 7th – my birthday. 37 years to the day after I arrived in a hospital a few dozen miles away, I spent my birthday bringing my mom to the hospital for a hysterectomy.
I never told her that I missed the concert to be there.
She would have never let me miss it, and I knew that I had to be there for her. I have zero regrets, and I’m grateful that even though it was crappy hospital waiting room time, we did have that time together, and I was hopefully able to calm her nerves and cheer her up a bit, joking around together on the drive in and while we waited.
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In the years since I became a mom myself, I always tried to visit my mom around my birthday so we can spend some time together, because I now realize that it wasn’t just a day for me - it was a day for her. The day you bring a baby into the world completely changes your life, whether it’s your first, second, or tenth baby. You are transformed into a completely different person when you have a baby, so it’s just as much of a “birth” for the mother as it is for the baby. You will never forget meeting that tiny little person for the first time & feeling your heart grow three sizes in an instant like the Grinch. So today especially she’s on my mind.
Over the past year, going through the experience of having a baby and then losing my mom 4 months later, I’ve had so many middle of the night moments awake with the baby where I was transported back in time, imagining what it must have been like for her back then when I was born - wondering what it was like for her being awake in the middle of the night with little baby me in her arms. I know so little about that time, it all looks blurry and dim when I picture it. I wish I could talk to her about it and ask all of the questions that I never thought to ask.
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Last night, I spent a while going back through old text messages with my mom. I started with my birthday last year, when she was fighting her way through chemo & dealing with the side effects, and I was 8 months pregnant trying to coordinate her medical care and everything else and not being particularly nice about it. I felt guilty for a moment but then as I scrolled on over the next few days and weeks, I found so many nice conversations that we’d had - talking about the baby when she arrived, as well as a lot of deep and difficult things that I’m so glad we had the chance to talk about while she was still here.
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This year, I will be spending my birthday watching my daughter graduate kindergarten, so you better bet there will be tears. Tears of happiness watching my daughter grow up & accomplish and achieve great things. Tears of sadness that my mom isn’t here to see it happen. Tears of nostalgia thinking of the memories of my own preschool graduation, my high school graduation…and my mom there in the crowd watching me grow up.
P.S. I feel like I have to add that she would kill me for using this picture but it’s one of the few I have of her from a birthday celebration. Sorry Mom! :)