Copyright
THE BIRTHDAY Copyright © 2011 by Ashley Barron
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Smashwords Edition: November 2011
Follow Ashley on Twitter: @dcPriya
Read Ashley’s blog: blog.thepriyas.com
The Birthday
I sweep narrowed eyes over my young son. My mind churns with suspicion. Is it report card time? No. Did I hear glass breaking in last few minutes? No. Is that absurd reality show on tonight—the one he insists he’s old enough to watch? No. Maybe.
I’m not sure.
I’m standing in the doorway of our somewhat untidy, recently remodeled kitchen. The front of my hair is wrapped in Velcro curlers, and I’m doing my best to conceal a quick glance at the oven clock.
Time is not my friend.
With a hidden sigh, I glue both eyes to my son’s face and soften the expression on my own. “I love you with all my heart.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “If you love me, then how come you won’t let me get that new video game?”
Ah, the reveal.
“The matter is settled,” I assure him. “You’re too young for it.”
“Mom!”
My name becomes one long, pleading wail. His knees are slightly bent, his hands clasped tightly together, his eyebrows raised in that sweetest of sweet ways. I’ll admit there have been a number of occasions when the tactic has proven fruitful.
It’s no wonder he continues to employ it.
I ignore his whining, choosing instead to study the cotton pajamas he’s wearing. They’re covered in his favorite cartoon character, faded at the elbows and knees, and stained just about everywhere in between. The fraying edges of the pant bottoms expose mismatched socks that aren’t in any better condition.
How does he do that so fast? Grows taller by the second, and still he manages to demolish his clothes with time to spare.
My daughter, on the other hand, hasn’t had a stain on her clothes since she grew old enough to consciously avoid dirt.
“Won’t work, sunny boy,” I say lightly, as I step to the kitchen island, reach across it, and tug my day planner to me. With a few strokes of the pen, shopping for new pajamas headlines tomorrow’s list of errands. “Won’t work.”
“Well, I know you love me.” My daughter steps out from behind her brother and tosses her hair from one side to the other. It’s still damp from her bath.
I study her face, so similar to my own. Unlike me, she was born with confidence to spare. My husband and I often marvel at her outspoken, self-assured ways. At least, when we’re not picturing her as an independent-minded sixteen-year-old with a driver’s license.
So far that image eclipses fire, natural disaster, job loss, and my husband’s mother moving in as top on our list of greatest fears for the future.
“Quit following me around,” I hear my son whisper to his little sister. “I was here first.”
And by first, what he means is that time begun at the moment of his birth. Maybe it did.
His words make me smile, mostly because, as the youngest of my siblings, I can’t relate to them. Back when I was born, the general response was “Oh, look, another one.”
I learned how to run before I could crawl and how to bargain before I could speak full sentences. Not even my senior year prom dress could escape the reality of hand-me-downs in a big family.
I was raised with love but not independence. I was raised with wholesome food but a limited menu.
Perhaps that is why I’ve been so devoted to finding ways to empower my children, and to show them as much of the world as my husband and I can pull into their lives.
I want them to have options, always.
The noise from my son’s pleading pulls me back to the present. I look at my daughter, still standing expectantly in front of me.
“You’re right. I do love you.” I can’t resist tugging gently on her hair before turning to my son. “And that is why, after this performance, you can add another month to the wait time for that video game.”
He falls dramatically to the floor, punctuating the drop with heavy groans of displeasure.
I laugh.
There will always be laughter in our home. Despite the teasing we took from our family and friends, my husband and I added those exact words to our wedding vows. At the time, we’d had no idea how complicated it would be to honor such a simple statement; we were young, in love, and everything was possible.
That’s what we tell ourselves.
There have certainly been periods when we’ve worried, both individually and as a couple, that laughter had left the sturdy walls and bright green lawn that anchor our space in this world.
Too often, it’s simpler to light the fuse of anger—somehow always within reach—than to commit the energy and hard work it takes to pull smiles and laughter out of hiding at the end of a long day.
After our vows were said, the challenges had begun almost immediately. They pushed and strained against our utopian ideals of marriage and the future. Being madly in love with one another hadn’t seemed to count for as much as we thought it would, surprisingly. We hadn’t been prepared for just how quickly two people become overwhelmed once the ink on the mortgage dries and the pressure of merging two extended families sweeps through, uninvited.
At the precise moment my husband and I believed we’d finally achieved balance between our respective families, we conceived a child.
That one act turned our own parents into unruly children.
Suddenly, every minute of our lives, every morsel of our love, had to be equally divided between the two sets. Competition would spring up in the oddest, most inconvenient and annoying places. I didn’t need the stress, not when my body was changing and my emotions were constantly leaving me with tear-streaked cheeks.
After a while, I’m not even sure all the fuss between them was about the baby. I think the competition morphed into a battle for world domination or head cheerleader.
At least poorly behaved children could be put in a timeout. But ill-mannered parents? My husband and I had no option but to wait it out.
All things considered, I suppose that period in our lives was good practice for when our son and daughter become teenagers. I’m only just beginning to accept how close they are to that complicated transformation.
How can they be this old, already?
Ten years ago, on the night our son pushed his way into this world, tiny and helpless, holding our hearts in his newborn hands, my husband and I found a new closeness.
When the nurse settled all seven pounds, eight ounces of him into my trembling arms, I knew what it was to hold a miracle.
My husband had been sitting on the bed beside us, his body shaking with emotion, his head so close to mine his tears rolled down my cheeks.
“Our child,” he had whispered.
It was my eyes, he would say, years later. The way I had looked at him, sitting there with our firstborn cradled against my chest, had delivered the precise coordinates of his new place in this world.
And what was the name of that new place?
Fear.
We were terrified, the two of us—and for all the right reasons, mind you. After five years together, a handful of hours on a narrow hospital bed had transformed us from couple to family.
Once we had weathered the first few months of being new parents, we were more determined than ever to ride out the pop-up emotional storms in our marriage with grace, calm, and united goals.
There will always be laughter in our home. We had made a choice to put those words in our ceremony, and we renewed our vow to honor them.
Most of the time, it was easy. Inspiration was all around us.
Watching the kids learn to crawl and walk and feed themselves was pure comedy.
Bandaging up my husband after his attempts at home improvement projects wasn’t funny, but his excuses for why things went wrong certainly were.
And we would hoot for days over the expression on our pizza delivery guy’s face when thick smoke from my latest culinary disaster would greet him at the door.
I often think of sunlight as laughter. It streams in through the windows, tickling me, following me from room to room as the day grows. But I can’t hold sunshine in my hands, can I? I can’t bottle it up for when the rain comes.
How I wish I could.
In every soul—mine, my husband’s—there exists those deepest, darkest, most stubborn days when a light simply will not shine.
We have seasonal strategies for those bleak days, my husband and I. On quiet summer nights, for example, we’ll sneak out into the backyard after the kids are asleep and wedge ourselves into a single lawn chair. In between kisses, we’ll try to outdo one another with tall tales of raising children.
Blame it on the giddy combination of moonlight and surviving another day of parenting, but once I laughed so hard I popped a button right off my blouse. It flung itself up in the air and twirled around before landing in the pocket of my husband’s shirt.
To this day, he keeps that button in a metal dish his grandpa gave to him back when he was a kid. That old tarnished bowl sits on his bedside table. Every night, he takes off his watch and his wedding ring and puts them inside for safe keeping.
My husband tells me that when he reaches into it in the mornings, his fingers always seem to find the button first, and he begins his day with thoughts of me, and of moonlight, laughter and kisses.
He thinks there is magic in his grandpa’s dish.
I think there is magic in us.
Love notwithstanding, sometimes the stress in our lives piles up in thick, iron-heavy heaps of trouble. During those times when we aren’t able to find the patience to speak civilly to one another, or to listen without criticism, we try to stay in separate corners until the heat of the moment burns itself out.
We don’t argue often, it’s not our style. Sure, we engage in spirited debates—we’re parents, after all—but we don’t argue. I won’t let us.
It is never the verbal contest of wills, the actual process of shouting arbitrary, needless threats at one another that I worry will jeopardize our love.
No, it’s the aftermath. It’s the time spent wondering if the words we hurled at each other with increasing speed and deadly aim were enough to kill our relationship, permanently.
The silence, the separation, the hurt and anger poisoning the air makes those the worst, the hardest, the most terrible days in our marriage.
Somewhere along the way, we learned how to get through the argument, how to reach for the center, the middle ground, and trust that the other will be there take hold of the pain and sooth it away.
To forgive.
For us, this middle ground is music. There are certain songs we’ve both fallen in love with over the years, special songs we reserve for those times when we—and our marriage—need them. Hearing those first notes begin to play always answers the question ripping its way through the soft flesh of my heart: “Is this the end?”
Suddenly, it no longer matters who started the fight, or who fueled it, or who will be the first to say “I’m sorry.” Yes, sometimes it takes more than one song, more than one day, to bend the anger enough to reach out and take hold of each other. To feel heartbeats and warm skin and the slide of a stubbly cheek over a smooth one.
“Mom, why are you rubbing your cheek like that? It’s weird.”
I stare down at my son, still on the kitchen floor, and wiggle my eyebrows at him. He’s just barely still young enough to find my face tricks amusing. Soon, I’ll have to learn a whole new set of ploys to distract him and change the conversation.
I turn my attention back to the list of chores I’d written out for myself this morning. Painfully few items sport confidence-building checkmarks next to them.
At least I’d managed to accomplish the tasks I ranked as most important—groceries, delivering a forgotten field trip form to school, and mailing thank you notes on behalf of a successful fundraiser held last week.
But the manicure? Never happened. I give a low whistle as I survey my short, plain nails.
Lunch with my best friend? Ended up being coffee and energy bars on the sidelines of little league.
The dog walks over and flings her body in a semi-circle around my ankles. My toes are instantly warm—and trapped. She whines pitifully in protest, no doubt, that an hour ago I swiped her favorite toys and tossed them in the washing machine.
I suppose, in the animal world, removing the stains and smells and slobber from my dog’s plush squeaker collection shows the ultimate disregard for all of the hard work she’s put into making them unfit for human contact.
“Why did you take the toys away?”
For a second, I think the dog—already convinced she’s human—has finally mastered English. I look back down at my feet and see that my daughter has joined her brother on the cold tiles of the kitchen floor.
I don’t answer the question. I’m wondering if I should make them get up and relocate to the family room carpet. But I don’t. They look so adorable, so relaxed, like sunbathers on the first day of summer.
With time moving so fast I’m determined to hold on to all the sweetness I can find in a day.
“Don’t you love her anymore?” My son’s chin rests against the dog. His voice is muffled by her thick coat.
I wonder why he’s so focused on the question of love. He’s fast approaching that age when boys discover girls, and the first blush of hormones turns into trading notes in class, sitting together at lunch, and calling each other on the phone.
I’m dreading it.
I don’t want him to outgrow childhood, and outgrow the reach of my mommy role as Most Important Person.
“Of course, I love her,” I say. “That’s precisely why I cleaned her toys. She can have them back tomorrow.”
The kids cuddle up closer to our dog and tangle themselves into a heap of limbs, pajamas and fluffy fur. And they begin to sing.
It’s a song I thought they had long-ago forgotten. It’s a child’s song, soft and happy. I stand completely still; I’m afraid my slightest movement will end the magic.
I hear the garage door rise. Soon my husband walks through the door. I hold a finger in front of my lips before pointing at the kids. He nods softly, and flashes me a smile. I want to relive this moment later, much later in life, when we sit our old bones down in rocking chairs and hold wiggling grandbabies on our knees.
Our children finish the last few lines of the song, and call out, “Hi Dad!”
His reply is drowned out by the chimes of the doorbell. The kids and dog are up in a flash in a mad-scrabble race to the front door. Their favorite babysitter has arrived. I know all them are thrilled by the prospect of no parents for the evening.
My son will get to watch that absurd reality show, thinking I’ll never be the wiser. My daughter, who greatly aspires to be sixteen, will spend the evening being dazzled by stories about high school. And the babysitter, about to get royally paid for spending the evening texting half the teens in our zip code, will be adored by all present.
As I listen to the hurried chatter of excited voices, my eyes remain on the now-empty spot on the kitchen floor. Is this what it will feel like when they’ve gone off into the world? Will I still hear their laughter echoing in this house?
“I love you.”
My husband’s words are soft in the quiet room. I know the exact look on his face when he speaks with that tone—the tone he’s been using lately when he talks about us having another child, one more child, before no more are possible.
I love this man. I love seeing his sleepy eyes in the morning. I love holding his body against mine in the night. I love hearing him tell the same stories over and over again.
And I love his children.
One more?
Yes.
The word crosses my lips just as the dog, her mood much improved, comes flying into the kitchen. She dances, and whines, and slobbers until my husband relents and reaches for her leash. I always get a good laugh out of their little routine. As far as I’m concerned, she’s the one taking him for a walk.
But I do wish, just this once, her timing had been better.
“Cakes,” my husband says, using the nickname he gave me back when we were dating. “We can’t be late. We’ve got theater tickets, remember?”
He says the words proudly.
I know he’s lying.
Today is my birthday. I am one giant step closer to a number that used to seem impossibly far away. I think back to all the penny-wishes I used up as a kid, trying to get to double digits faster.
And now I keep reaching for a pause button that doesn’t exist.
I don’t necessarily want to go back in time. But every now and again, I want to stop it from moving forward. Too much is out of focus, happening too fast.
I won’t know what it’s like to live these years until they have long since passed me by.
Right now, I’m not aware of the background sounds and smells, and the details of images that will take center stage when my eyes no longer see much, and my legs won’t carry me anywhere worth going.
Maybe that’s why life is lived on fast-forward. Maybe that’s why we’re not able—not designed—to pause, to catch our breaths, to gain perspective.
Perhaps we are each walking around with giant nets capturing every detail that can be collected. Somewhere along the line, these details are turned into memories so real we can touch them and hold them, just as we ourselves used to be held.
They become the liquid gold of old age.
A healing tonic no lab can create, no doctor can prescribe, no talent can fake.
“Cakes? The theater?” My husband points to my robe.
I look at him and try to absorb every detail about him, about this minute.
You see, tonight is my surprise birthday party. He thinks I don’t know. He’s been twisting himself into knots for weeks trying to hide the evidence.
I’ve enjoyed every adorable moment of it.
“I’m so impressed you got theater tickets for my birthday!” I kiss him. It never hurts to play along, not when he’s gone to so much trouble to honor me. “Give me ten minutes!”
I climb the stairs and pad softly down the hall to our master bedroom. Earlier, I’d pulled my favorite cocktail dress out of my packed closet and noticed it looked rumpled from being crushed against other clothes. The hour had been far too late to dash to the cleaners and beg for mercy, so I’d steamed up the shower and hooked my dress over the glass door to try and freshen it up a bit.
The truth is, I don’t really didn’t care if it isn’t crisp and perfect. What’s a wrinkle or two, anyway?
How easy it is to be cavalier when the creases are in my clothes.
I flip on the bathroom light and position myself in front of the mirror. The lines in my forehead stare back at me. So do the grooves in the skin around my eyes and mouth. My husband says he likes them, says they are evidence of a happy life.
I make faces at my reflection. As long as I’m not smiling or laughing, the wrinkles aren’t too noticeable, I decide. But who chooses a life—or a week, or a day—without laughter simply to mask the passing of time?
The shoes I’d planned to wear have disappeared. With a little time and effort, I’m certain I could locate them in one of my daughter’s preferred hiding places. But time is what I don’t have right now. I don’t even have the time to get annoyed.
The dog, likely in protest of the toy-washing incident, has licked my patchwork evening bag—a prized bargain I unearthed years back at the outlets—from top to bottom. Not wanting to touch it, I use my toes to tuck it behind the door and out of sight.
The jewelry I’d selected with such enthusiasm this afternoon no longer appeals to me. I always wear the same earrings, anyway. Gold and dangly. Neither fancy nor casual. They were my anniversary gift from my husband the year our daughter was born. I still tell him he overspent, but to his satisfaction I wear them almost every day.
“He loves you” they seem to sing out to me when they catch the light and shine it on my reflection in the mirror. They make me happy, remind me of him.
Through the open bathroom door I hear my husband call out my name. I toss my robe aside and pull the dress from its hanger. Mindful of my fresh lipstick, I carefully lower it over my head, and take satisfaction in the bright color and good fit of the fabric.
“Cakes!” The urgency in my husband’s voice increases. “Cakes, we’ll be late. You look beautiful even in your bathrobe. You always look beautiful. We need to get on the road soon—traffic and all that.”
Knowing this man as I do, loving him, loving our life, I suspect his main concerns are as follows: his excitement to surprise me—his beloved wife, the mother of his children—with a special evening he has personally planned; and, the urgent pull of his empty stomach.
But don’t hold me to the order.
I tug the last of the Velcro rollers from my bangs, give my hair a quick brush, a few pats, and I’m ready. My fingers pass over the light switch as I’m leaving the room.
Happy birthday, I say to myself.
Wearing my fancy dress, my not so fancy earrings, my wrong color shoes, and with my everyday purse slung across my shoulders, I step out into the hall looking much the way I always do: quality, well-made pieces that weren’t put together in quite the right way.
Me. In a nutshell.
At the top of the stairs, I stop and listen to the sounds of my world floating up from below. These are my real gifts, my liquid gold.
I hear them with my heart. I store them in my soul. I think of the memories we’ve made together, of the memories yet to come.
And I am no longer afraid of the years already gone by.
All that I have now, at this very moment, will again be mine. A long time from now—when I am an old, old woman—my life will be returned to me, to hold, to savor, to love again.