Mixed Metaphors

“Auntie Linda, it’s okay that you’re old. It means you’re not dead!” — Four-year-old niece, Gemma

The Backstory: When Gemma was four years old, I was bending over her car seat buckling her in, she saw my face up close, let’s be precise, the wrinkles of my face up close. In that observational, yet nonjudgmental matter-of-fact manner that children possess, she commented, “Auntie Linda, you’re old!!!” My old, wrinkled face couldn’t hide my hurt feelings. My niece Gemma loves me wholeheartedly and clearly didn’t want me to feel bad, so she replied in a cheery voice with a smile on her face, “Auntie Linda, it’s okay that you’re old, it means you’re not dead!”  And you know, she’s right, I’m not dead, and I’m grateful for that. Gemma is now 16-years-old and I remain older and above ground.

A few days ago, I celebrated my 71^st birthday, this year, a safer-at-home pandemic day. Like many others who have a birthday near Christmas, or New Year’s, we sometimes believe the anniversary of our birth is eclipsed by other celebrations.

Add to that my ambivalence with receiving attention, and it ends up being a mixed bag of wanting people to acknowledge the day and express gratitude for my presence in their lives and to actually wish they don’t bring up the subject of my birthday and shine a light on me.  It’s not about getting older; I’m okay with aging, though it’s become more challenging as other’s see and value me differently, mostly in the public and working spheres.

Celebrating a birthday in January has its upside and downside.

The upside: For me, a January birthday is another opportunity to review a year of my life, to reflect on both the gains and losses, the lessons learned, and to acknowledge my gratitude for the people who share it with me, and to reminisce about our lived experiences. It’s also a time to look ahead at the year in front of me, the remaining eleven-and-a-half months. It’s no coincidence that the month is named for Janus, the Roman God of new beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings.

The downside: People are generally weary of holidays and gatherings with family and friends (during pre-pandemic times), especially in the cold Midwestern winter, when we tend to hibernate and stay indoors. January is often a time when people begin resolutions, focus on themselves, new initiatives, and redirect their energy from the social to the personal, or restore and replenish what was expelled. I usually don’t have a birthday party or gathering, because I too, need to do the latter.

As is my habit, I attempt to look at the glass half-full when I’m able. This reminiscence is a personal reminder of all the gifts I’ve received over the years, gifts of attention, greetings, birthday parties, cakes with candles, birthday songs sung by loved ones, flowers and candy, and presents to unwrap. Most of all, birthdays are an acknowledgement of being loved.

One of my most precious gifts are memories. I share them here not only as a reminder for myself — yet a hope, that as a reader — you may find some commonality in your lived experience.    

On the Day I Was Born

One of my favorite birthday traditions were the phone calls with my parents. Since my birthday is in January and follows the trio of holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, I typically don’t visit my family in Racine, Wisconsin, my hometown. Instead, Dad will call me and sing Happy Birthday. When I still lived at home, my bedroom was upstairs. Early in the morning, he’d open the downstairs door and in his commanding father’s voice would sweetly sing, Happy Birthday! to wake me.

Years later, when we talked on the phone, he’d relive the day I was born, then hand-off the phone to Mom. Most years, after Mom would tell me happy birthday and remind me how much I was loved, we’d share some tears together. I always felt closest to my mother on my birthday since we shared that intimate experience. I was their firstborn child and the day was special for the three of us. My parents were still teens when I was born, Dad, 19 and Mom, 17.

This year, like every other birthday, Dad talked about the weather on the day I was born. I was born on Friday the 13^th at 8:06 p.m. He said the weather was like a London Fog day during a January thaw. It was drizzling rain. He was grateful that he and Mom only had to walk a block to Mom’s eldest sister, Dorothy’s home, so she could drive them to St. Luke’s Hospital.  After 18 hours of labor, Mom gave birth to me and Dad said the nurse brought me out to the waiting room to introduce him to his new baby girl. Dad said I wasn’t cleaned up, yet he thought I was beautiful.

Dad is a gregarious person, who easily makes friends, which he did that day too with another expectant father. Bob and his wife Lee, their newborn son along with my mother and I became friends. Bob worked at Western Printing in Racine, publisher of Golden Books and other childhood books, games, and puzzles, plus more. Over the years I received a generous amount of classic childhood stories.

A Cavalcade of Cakes

Like many others during the pandemic, my dreamlife has been vivid, busy untangling the knots and unfinished business of the past, reviewing the present, and addressing the anxiety of the uncertainty of the future. A few nights before my birthday, I had a dream about my mother. In the dream, she was alive again for a moment and reassured me that she was okay, thriving in the afterlife.

The next day I reminisced about the past when I was child. I remembered a cake she used to make when we were young, a poppy seed cake. As curious kids and cautious eaters, we’d ask, “What are those black specks?” Mom typically didn’t tease us like Dad so when she responded that they were mouse turds, we believed her and recoiled. Winters in our home often became a refuge for a mouse or two, so we immediately believed her. She laughed, hugged, and reassured us that she was only kidding and asked if we wanted a piece of cake. Yes!

That dream and memory caused me to crave a poppy seed cake, so I ordered one for my birthday this year from Lane’s, Madison’s Danish Bakery. The dream, the reminiscing, and the cake became the inspiration for Mouse Turd Cake & Other Birthday Memories. Following is a cavalcade of cakes from the past:

• Growing up, besides poppy seed cake, Mom was famous for her chocolate mayonnaise cake (the mayo made it extremely moist, and the cake was a dark chocolate). German Chocolate Cake was another favorite with the coconut and pecan frosting. Mom also made a spice cake with a caramel frosting that was like candy. One year, I made a spice cake for my birthday.
• Since I grew up in Racine, when we had family birthday parties, we would often enjoy a decorated Danish Layer Cake from one of Racine’s many Danish bakeries. A Danish Layer Cake was usually a white or yellow cake with alternating layers of raspberry and lemon in the summer or custard in the winter. Yum!

• Dad and I share many things in common, one is our love of carrot cake. Mom didn’t make carrot cake to my recollection though Dad would always enjoy a piece for dessert when he went out to eat and my sister Kelly ordered him one for a recent birthday. Here are three carrot cake memories from my birthday history:
  • My former partner of 15 years suggested one birthday that we take a drive to Mt. Horeb and have breakfast at one of our favorite diners, Schubert’s. After breakfast, our waitress brought out a full-size carrot sheet cake with candles that my partner had ordered and sang Happy Birthday. We enjoyed the remainder of the cake the next few days.

• • My PAL friendship group, an acronym for the first initials of our names, celebrated my birthday during our January monthly coffee and check-in gatherings. I enjoyed a Batch Bakehouse Carrot Cake, absolutely one of the best gifts.

• • Another birthday, I ordered a carrot cake for myself. A Madison Bed and Breakfast, Collin’s House, was famous for their carrot cake. When A Room of One’s Bookstore served coffee, bakery, desserts and lunch, they featured Collins House Carrot Cake.
  • The owners of Collins House opened Manna Café, featuring some of the same food served at the Bed & Breakfast. Sadly, Manna Café is a recent casualty of the pandemic. One year I ordered a whole cake and enjoyed it for days. Their cream cheese frosting was unrivaled.
• Ice cream cakes from Dairy Queen and French Silk Pies from Monty’s Blue Plate Diner have also been my featured hybrid birthday cakes.

• Another nontraditional birthday cake was a surprise from a woman I had just started dating after New Year’s years ago. It was an assemblage of cupcakes, shared with other patrons as they sang me Happy Birthday on our date to hear music at Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse.

Birthday Gifts, Parties, & Other Memories

As much as I might complain about a January birthday, when I take the time to reminisce, I realize I’m loved, lucky, and grateful. Following are some highlights of gifts, parties, and memories:

• This year, two of my friends, Pod Squad members, and chosen family, surprised me with beautiful pink roses and assorted chocolate from Gail Ambrosius.

• Tulips were my mother’s favorite flowers and they also became mine. One year my friend Dino, who was also my neighbor at the time, famous for his culinary, interior decorating, and design talents, brought me 40 tulips in large glass bowl for my 40^th birthday.
• Another year, my ex, Cindy, delivered white tulips for my birthday and arranged them artfully for me as she had every time she bought me flowers in the past.
• My friend Rhonda, decades ago when she was courting me when I was newly sober, made me a birthday dinner, the highlight, a heart-shaped meatloaf.
• A couple of years later, I was in my first sober relationship and had moved into a new townhouse that month. I hosted a combined birthday/housewarming party. (I would not recommend moving in January! I extend a special thank you to my friend, Lois whose gift was managing the logistics of the move!). The theme of the party was a recreation of a Sweet 16 Birthday Party. The menu: Sloppy Joes, potato chips, cherry Jell-O, fudge brownies, birthday cake and ice cream. Though the theme was teen-aged, we played an adult version of Truth or Dare.

• When I turned 40, I had a Red-Letter Birthday! My long-time friend and former lover, Sandra, hosted a “Black & White” themed birthday party. Guests were asked to wear black and white (the basics of my wardrobe even today). Of course, there were black balloons and I was gifted a black and white feather boa to wear. Friends roasted me and Sandra complied, a This Is Your Life book of memories. The cake was legendary, custom-made by our friend Sharon. It was an homage to Jessica Rabbit (the femme fatale played by Kathleen Turner) in the animated PG-rated film Roger Rabbit. Jessica Rabbit’s character possessed large breasts which were the centerpiece of the cake. Her dress was black and so was the frosting, and her breasts featured gumdrop nipples. Somewhere, there’s a photo of me, taking a bite about of a gumdrop and a breast with black frosting on my cheeks. Oh, My!
• For my 40^th birthday, I had also ordered a brand-new car, a Super Red Toyota Celica-GT Hatchback. It looked like a Porsche, and I acquired a number of speeding tickets the years I drove that car. I picked up the car on my birthday, and my partner at the time and I went cruising on the highway on a beautiful, sunny, January winter day.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• On my 45^th birthday, my partner Cindy and I planned a Charcoal-Grilled Fajitas Birthday Party. At the 11^th hour, I was called in to work on Saturday, and she freaked out, Cindy had counted on me to help prep the food, and get the house ready for guests. We argued before and after the party, yet in the end, she grilled marinated chicken breasts outside on the charcoal grill, and we had all the fixings for a great Mexican dinner followed by a wonderful party with friends.
• Not all birthday memories were good ones. On the eve of my thirteenth birthday, my parents went out on a Saturday night and didn’t return home until the next day. As the eldest, I worried like a parent and cared for my younger siblings, stoking the coal furnace (yes, I’m that old), and getting everyone fed and dressed for the day.
• One year, my ex and I, plus two of her friends, went to dinner at one of my favorite steakhouses, Smoky’s Club. I was sober while the rest of the party consumed many pre-dinner cocktails. My partner drank gin and tonics which usually unleashed poor behavior as it did that night.
• Not all exes behave badly. My ex-husband all these years later continues to send me birthday cards. Not all birthday dinners are downers either. Another ex (yes, full disclosure, I have a few!) Tracy treated me to one of my favorite Fish Fries at the Stable Grill at Quivey’s Grove.
• A birthday dinner tradition that is one of my highlights of the year and favorite memories, is the shared birthday dinners with friend and chosen family member, Leanne. We’ve celebrated our January birthdays selecting different restaurants during Madison’s Winter Restaurant Week for the past 12 years. This year, so far, it looks like the Madison Winter Restaurant Week may be another casualty of the pandemic. We may create our own, carrying out food and sharing it together virtually on Zoom.
• Lastly, family and friends know that I’m a cinephile. I had two birthday parties at the AMC Theater at Hilldale, formerly Sundance 608. The first year featured the film The Hurt Locker, and I was joined by seven friends, the second party in 2018, I had anxiously been waiting for Steven Spielberg’s film about the Pentagon Papers, The Post, to premiere. Since it was opening in Madison the weekend of my birthday, I invited friends and family to join me for a matinee on Saturday afternoon and a post-film discussion. Much to my delight, almost two dozen people reserved seats near me and we filled almost two rows of the theater. I was greeted with hugs, birthdays cards, gifts, and more hugs, and to make the event and day even more special, for the first time in my life, people sang Happy Birthday to me in a movie theater!

Grief & Gratitude

The past few years, January is now also a month of anniversaries that mark the deaths of loved ones. Our beloved mother died on January 23^rd in 2016, and my free-spirted sister Cindy, died on my birthday in 2019. The anniversary of her death is now forever connected with the anniversary of my birth. Grief and gratitude go hand-in-hand.

I’m grateful for each birthday I have, now more than ever during the pandemic. I’m lucky and loved.

Finally, a poem from my 70^th Birthday:

On the Eve of My 70^th Birthday

On my birthday, I won’t count candles,
instead, this year, I’ll count by tens.
It’s faster and mirrors
how time remaining each new day,
or season, or year, clock or calendar,
tick-tocks or tears by lickety-split.

I remember the endless summers of childhood,
time spent dawdling between dawn and dusk,
in daydreams and reverie,
chasing curiosity, living in the moment.
Soon to be replaced by to-do lists
and deadlines, ‘adulting.’

Midlife we’re apt to spend as much time
dwelling in the past or the future, rather than the present.
We look back at the road behind us, hoping
to help navigate the journey before us.
Along the way we collect regrets, amends to make,
and resolve to do better.

There comes a moment too, when we revisit
the lessons of hello and goodbye,
of what and who to hold onto, and what and who
we’re asked to let go.
Life takes on a new meaning,
material things hold less value.

We become grateful for each new day,
a blank slate, an opportunity to be a human being,
not a human doing.
Our memories, our loved ones,
our lived experiences, precious.
Grief and gratitude, hand-in-hand.

LLL
01/12/2020

Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!

70 Is NOT the New 60, It’s 70!

Another Trip Around the Sun

Memories, Milestones & Musings

Everything New Is Old Again

Beach Boys, Beatles, Bob Dylan, & The Byrds

Poop Eggs & Lamp Cakes