Birthday

One day that winter, I had a birthday. I got cards from my mother and from my father, and I got one from Sherri, a cute, handmade thing that stood out in stark contrast to the schmaltzy store-bought cards my parents sent. But the ones from my parents each had money inside, and that made them valuable.

"Today's my birthday," I told Mike.

"Happy birthday, man."

I was twenty-one.

I went to class that day, as usual. Nobody I saw knew it was my birthday. Birthdays, I thought. Why do we celebrate them? What are they, anyway? It is just another day.

We had never made much of birthdays in my house when I was growing up. There was usually a cake and a present given at the dinner table if it was a weekday, at breakfast if it was the weekend. My father's birthday and my mother's birthday were celebrated tiredly after work. My mother would give my father a new shirt that looked like all the other shirts he had. My father would get my mother some kitchen utensil that she considered useless. There was not much romance involved in any of it beyond the forced smiles and the mandatory singing of the "Happy Birthday" song.

My parents decided to throw a party for me once when I started school. I was given invitations to pass out in class, but somehow the date got screwed up so that we were gone when the kids and their parents showed up on Saturday. We waited unknowingly the next day, but nobody came. I didn't know what happened until I went back to school on Monday. But the mistake was a devastating and irrevocable blow. My parents never had the energy to try it again. After that, I went to the birthday parties of my classmates and friends, and though they seemed like fun, I never really enjoyed them. No matter how elaborate they were, everything about them always felt artificial.

As I grew up, I began to realize that I was uncomfortable either getting or giving attention on command. It felt synthetic, I thought, mechanized and routine. I suspected, however, without ever saying it, that these feelings were residue from that first birthday party that never was.

That is what I kept in mind all day as I went about my routine. But it didn't help. Deep down, I wanted the world to stop and say. . . what? I didn't know. I didn't deserve the stopping of things, I knew, but there was some primitive longing for a sudden voice from the heavens, some recognition that I was alive.

The gift arrived in the best possible way, unknowable and unexpected. It came from a girl in my Films of Charlie Chaplin class. I had seen her but had never spoken to her before. In truth, I was so shy, I never spoke to anybody. This day, however, she sat in the seat right next to me where I sat next to Mike in the old folding chairs of the giant auditorium.

"How do you like the class?" she asked me.

"I like it a lot. It's really great."

"Yea, everybody loves it."

I could feel the tension in my body as she spoke. Her voice was soft and natural, without meditation or artifice. I felt the difference between us right away. Where she was beautiful and smooth, I was awkward and unnatural. She had many birthday parties in her life, I thought, and they had all been grand events, beautiful things that she accepted with the presumptive grace of a certain class.

"I've seen you all term," she said to me, her eyes dead on mine. The tiny muscles just below the surface of my skin begin to contract and quiver involuntarily as if I were suddenly freezing. I was both disbelieving and hopeful in equal part. Unassumingly, she proffered, "I've wanted to say hello."

I didn't know what I was supposed to do. My mind was blank. I had no experience in this other than what I had seen on television and in movies, and my mind raced through its small catalog of appropriate lines.

All I could come up with was, "It's my birthday."

What? What had I said? She hadn't asked me if today was special! She hadn't asked me if it was my birthday! I was an idiot.

"Really? Well happy birthday. . . what's your name?"

I told her so awkwardly that it sounded like a lie.

"Listen, I work at the Coral Reef. You know where that is?" The Coral Reef was a an exclusive seafood restaurant where the city's attorneys and businessmen went. It was too expensive for students. "Come by on Saturday and I will buy you a drink. I get off at three, so come around then. O.K."

"O.K."

I sat there stunned and unbelieving. It was my birthday and the sky had opened up. I had heard a voice from beyond. Everything was different. Everything had changed.

And then I thought of Sherri.