And So It Goes

The day went exactly as I had predicted.  After coffee with mom, I went home and took a long walk through town, past the churches and the Sunday worshippers, past the big lakeside condos that become more attractive to me all the time, through the gold course past the historic Gamble Rodgers home where a wedding group was listening to a jazz band outside on the patio, then down the Boulevard busy with Sunday brunch goers.  Back home, I soaked and showered and readied for a mimosa.  The evening meal and the Super Bowl lay ahead.  

I got two birthday cards.  One was from the attorneys I had after the accident.  The other was from Bradley's Saloon.  Their's came with a gift--a free drink.  They have been sending me this card every year since I first went to the old Palm Beach betting parlor and speak easy way back in the previous century.  I have no memory of giving them my birth date, but it was my favorite bar until they moved across the river.  

I got the obligatory b-day texts from those who have such things marked on their e-calendars.  The Factory group, for instance.  

"Happy birthday!!!  Have a GREAT day!!!"

Colored balloons float across the screen.  

It doesn't really matter to me.  I don't like birthdays, especially mine, and I don't remember anyone else's except my mother's.  I've been told that for some, birthdays are more important than Christmas.  I am a relationship failure in this, I guess.  Making a celebration disables me.  I am too anxious.  It took me decades to learn how to write a simple "thank you" note.  I couldn't simply say "thank you."  Oh, no. . . I needed to write something epic.  And so I work myself up and put too much pressure on myself to make something memorable.  And I fail.  Miserably.  

And so I spent my birthday alone as I have so many times before.  I received no presents.  I got no cake.  

This is not a complaint, not a pity party for me.  It is just a fact.  I have had girlfriends in the past who threw parties for me.  They used to do that at work as well.  I would not go to work on my birthday just to avoid it, but it didn't matter.  When I came in, my office would be decorated and there would be cake.  

I've never been comfortable with the attention.  

I got to the cafe mid-afternoon.  There was the usual Sunday line at the counter.  The pretty ballet dancer was working.  Ahead of me, young Photo Booth girls were ordering complicated coffee drinks that took forever to make.  Then one of the girls would take a sip and turn to her friends and say, "Oh. . . yea. . . this is good."

When I got to the counter, the serving girl smiled.  

"Your hair looks good like that.  I like it!"

I had it pulled back in that movie "dirty secretary" way, hair falling from the tie.  

"Thank you," I said.  "I'll have a half caf, half decaf caramel mocha latte with oat, soy, and almond milk, steamed and frothed with cinnamon and. . . and. . . ."

"You can have anything you want," said the dancer smiling and looking me in the eyes.  

Now that can take a fellow's breath away, I'll attest.  

"Then I'll just have a big-assed mimosa," I laughed.

"No more Dry January?"

I hadn't been in for weeks and couldn't believe she remembered that.  I had the impulse to tell her it was my birthday, but I thought she might ask how old I was.  Ho!

"Nope."

And so she went to work slicing the oranges and putting them through the squeezer.  She is the only one who will do this for me before five o'clock, and I guessed that I was as irritating to the people behind me as the mocha girls had been to me.  

"Here you go--a big-assed mimosa."  

"Thanks," I cleverly replied.  I'm like that.  Just.  

And so I took a picture of me and my hair.  I am going to have to request that someday they clean the mirror.  

I sat at a table and pulled out my notebook, but first I replied to some of the birthday texts.  There was a voice text singing the Happy Birthday song.  I replied with my birthday selfie.  

"This is me in the immediate," I said feeling my oats as the saying used to go.  Then a big hit off the mimosa.  Having not had one in so very long, it was good fun.  And when it was gone, I called my mother. 

"I'm heading to the store to get stuff for dinner.  Do you need anything?"

I made a simple spaghetti and broccoli meal, and I opened my first bottle of wine since December.  I bought a nice one, and it was very good.  Then the Super Bowl.  I'm sure the NFL lost their audience after the big halftime spectacle.  That is when my phone went silent.  And that's the way it stayed. 

It is another springlike day here, ten or eleven degrees above the norm, a brightly lighted and cloudless sky.  My mother is up and I must tend to the day.  I'll see if she wants breakfast.  I'll take her car to get it washed after the gym.  Then I'll come back to make dinner.  I probably need to strip the beds and wash the sheets.  Not "probably."  

They cheered Trump at the Super Bowl.  And so it goes.  They say Kendrick Lamar is a musical genius.  Huh. This is more my kind.  I'm a foolish fool. . . for love.  

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