Salads May Well Remain: On Birthdays and Being Measured

When I was younger, birthdays seemed to be a second Christmas. With food, gifts, guests, and a day of fun and play.

But as I grew older, birthdays became less of a celebration than an evaluation.

And it's not that I am against birthdays. Salads are very much welcome.

Yet somewhere between the greetings, food, and polite inquiries sharpened into social measurement, I feel less like a celebrant than a person pending review.

I say this because birthdays sometimes require you to perform competence in a day that supposedly celebrates you.

Where you are supposed to be elevated for being born, you are expected to have elevated yourself for society to perceive and approve.

It doesn't help when grief enters the table. It's not just about time lost, people no longer present, but the feeling of being lost in a world where every year should have given you more ease to navigate.

Some people have been blessed with grace and economy.

Some people stumble in their paths because circumstance arrived earlier than instruction.

I stand between the two.

People expect you to follow certain scripts. They share stories of their own successes, which is valid and normal, but they also expect you to do the same once they turn their attention to you.

And as the birthday celebrant, the person they came to greet, I can only smile and offer more food. Not because it is the only thing I can offer, but because I had not been informed that there will be an audience waiting for agreeable stories.

I agreed for a party. I did not agree to be audited as if my life had an incident report.