Birthday From Childhood

There was a morning when you woke up and everything was different. Because today was yours.

Birthdays as a child had a particular quality that is hard to describe to someone who has only had adult birthdays. The total commitment of it. The whole day belonging to you. The knowledge that today, more than any other day of the year, the world had arranged itself around you.

The waking up. Earlier than usual, probably. The particular alertness of a day you have been counting toward. Something was different before you even opened your eyes. The quality of the morning was different. Even the light through the curtains seemed to know.

Downstairs would have been modified. Something would be different in the kitchen. A banner, maybe. Or streamers. Or just the stack of presents on a chair or the table, wrapped in paper you recognised as special because it only appeared on special days. The sight of that wrapping paper with your name on, still unwrapped, was its own particular enjoyment. The pre-gift. The anticipation balanced perfectly against the not-yet.

The birthday breakfast, if there was one. The special thing you were allowed today that was not the usual thing. Whatever small ceremonial departure from routine that marked this day as set-apart.

The tearing of paper. That is irreplaceable. A specific physical pleasure unique to these moments. The resistance of the paper against your hands, the ripping that reveals what is inside. The moment between concealment and revelation that lasts a second and holds everything. And then the thing itself. And the looking at the thing. And the thing being yours.

A cake. At some point in the day, a cake. The candles set in it, the exact number, the exact number of your very current age, a number that felt important. The singing. Which you probably found embarrassing, depending on the year, and secretly loved. The breath gathered. The candles blown. All of them, hopefully, in one go. If all of them in one go, a wish granted.

The wish you made. You may or may not remember it. Wishes have a strange storage system, filed somewhere below the ordinary memories. But the moment of wishing. Eyes closed, candles lit, the smell of warm wax and frosting. The serious, earnest investment in the wish. Believing completely that the universe was listening.

The friends, if there were friends. The controlled chaos of children in a house that has been given over to the event. Games and noise and at some point an argument that resolved itself in the way children's arguments resolve, which is to say: completely.

The end of the day. The coming down. The particular tiredness of a day that has been lived at full intensity. The gifts arranged on the shelf or the floor. The cards propped open. The sum of the day, which was small by any adult measure, being everything.

You were thoroughly loved on those days. In the particular way of people who wanted you to know it.

You were.

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