Birthday

It's my birthday today. Shhh... I'd rather not hear the words, "Happy Birthday!"

I think I started hating my own birthday, subconsciously, when I was about five or six years old. My brother and I were horsing around in our backyard, where we had a basketball half-court. For some reason or another, the horsing around became a serious shoving match. Naturally, though my brother gave up a few pounds on me, he was older by two years, taller, and probably stronger. So my right eye received the business end of the concrete. I was glad I didn't lose any teeth (in other news, I did get back at my brother by loosening his tooth for him in another episode).

Anyhow, I bawled like the big crybaby I was and fell asleep. It was about five in the afternoon. Because of the fight, my parents chose not to wake me up. So they ate all the goodies prepared for that day and my brother ended up blowing the candles on my cake. Bummer.

Birthdays also often meant periodical exams in school so I never really enjoyed this time of year. Still, it was a bit of fun because two of my other classmates and I had back-to-back-to-back birthdays from the 3rd to the 5th.

Then there was that incident during the time of my 18th birthday when I was finishing some papers for my PoliSci class. It was the 40th day since my maternal grandfather had passed on. He was literally salt of the earth, a carpenter who loved making things with his hands until the last few months of his life.

So there I was, rushing to get some work done. It was 3:00 a.m. and I was writing like crazy to get the work done - no PC then and the typewriter would have been too loud (yes, I am dating myself impossibly here). To this day, I can swear that I heard some noises – first of a saw cutting its way through plywood, then the hammering of nails into wood.

My hackles rose and goosebumps broke out all over my body – but I ignored the sounds at first. It was only when I heard the tinkling of glass, as if my grandfather was pouring himself a shot of Tanduay on ice, that I finally gave up, left the kitchen and lay down on the couch. While I closed my eyes and blacked out the sound, I said a prayer for the repose of his soul. Whether or not that worked, I fell asleep anyway.

(No, I wasn't smoking weed that day. And I wasn't drinking.)

Then there are the specials called... the birthday break-ups!

(Pause... let me digest that line for just one more moment...)

This is the tenth year in a row when something has overtaken my birthday and I was not able to celebrate it with my family. If I can't celebrate it with them, then there's no reason for me to.

Still, a birthday is a chance to be thankful for the gift of life, and hard as it may be for some, life will always be precious. A birthday is a chance to say "thank you" to those who have given me life and nurtured me to become the person that I was. My life is a testament to what they have done for me, and though at times I would tend to blame them for living their life through mine, I'm oh so very glad that they bothered in the first place. Others aren't as lucky.

Happy birthday to me.