Birthday Blog 2020
I’m one of those people who just loves her own birthday. Truth be told, I would probably love anything that closely associated with cake. So imagine my glee at a day where it’s all about MY cake, just the way I want it. Boundless, childish joy.
My birthday in 2013, taken by my dear French friend Naima, who gave me a French dish towel that year. I preferred it as headwear. It made me tres, tres joyeuse.
Some people question being celebrated for their own birth because they don’t feel like they had anything to do with it. That’s a matter of perspective in my opinion, colored by religion or spirituality, or the absence of those things. Me, I like to take credit wherever possible. I feel like being born is one of my greatest accomplishments. I even wrote a song about it.
Along unrelated lines, and perhaps expanding upon a confusing credo—which I can do because this is a messay (a messy essay, for first time ML readers) AND it’s my birthday!!!—I want to publicly declare my belief that goofiness is next to godliness. Done well, goofiness is not only a high art, but also a sport. The ever-sacred silly muscle—aka “goofius maximus”—is one that needs to be exercised regularly so it can be there at the drop of a hat, whenever we really need it. Like NOW.
(A serious aside on an important topic: don’t ever drop your hat. It’s especially easy to do if you live in New York City and ride the subway. It gets hot in there. It’s tempting to take your hat off and lay it in your lap. Then you start looking at your book or phone or other people, you get to your station, stand up, exit quickly out the door before you get crushed by it or the oncoming crowd, and poof! There goes your hat. Lost forever on the floor of New York. Can you tell this has happened to me—more than once?!)
I’m scared to death about lots of things at the moment. I bet you are too. But you wouldn’t know it to look at me. Here I am, worry free, enjoying ridiculous amounts of popcorn.
Popcorn is my favorite food, next to cake. One favorite savory food, one favorite sweet. Hey! I just discovered that “favorite savory” is one of those fantastic phrases that brings forth internal rhyme. Internal rhyme, sublime.
I’m pretty sure I know how my favorite foods achieved their status.
1. I was an early recipient of very special birthday cakes. Here’s proof.
2. I grew up in a popcorn-rich environment. How? My dad owned a drive-in theater.
The popcorn flowed like water. Why does that sound like a mixed metaphor? Is popcorn a metaphor (or something like that) unto itself? I think so. Just say the word “popcorn” out loud, right now, and see if it doesn’t add a certain lift to your step and your spirit. People’s voices tend to pop upwards on the “pop” of “popcorn,” no?
Feel free to register your disagreement. Send videos of people saying “popcorn” looking depressed, placing the accent on “corn.” I can handle it. It’s my birthday. I’m as high as a kernel bursting out of a pot with no top, cheery as a bird on its first flight, and grateful as a newborn baby in the midst of her mother’s inaugural embrace, scared, hungry, and happy to be born into this insane, inexplicable, weird, wonderful world.
Thank you life.
My friend Elaine crowned me on my birthday in 2018. I’m clinging to it.
