Birthdays and anniversaries…a time to look back and to cast your gaze forward. We celebrated mine just yesterday. There were cards, calls, a dinner out with my family, (where my husband had tied two giant numeral balloons to our table, announcing in shiny silver numerals, my age–a gesture that I had some mixed feelings about, truth be known). Who wants to announce one’s age as we inevitably turn older? Yet one of my most cherished moments during the day came when I went to Gilda’s Club to lead my current “Writing Through Cancer” workshop session.
I knew something was afoot. The group members asked for ten minutes of time at the end of our session. I agreed, quickly shifting my plan to allow for their time. Yet I had no idea what was in store, and when they each read notes or poems of appreciation, then joined in singing “Happy Birthday” (accompanied by two of the members, one on ukulele, the other playing the guitar, my laughter was also accompanied by tears welling in my eyes. I went home filled with my heart full, and later in the evening, when I shared their notes and pictures with my husband, his eyes got a little misty too. They had given me a great gift, a surprise “Happy Birthday” moment that will be recalled more than a few times as other birthdays come and go.
Birthdays have gotten quieter as my husband and I have aged. The big celebrations are reserved for our grandchildren’s birthdays and their excitement. Flora, my Toronto granddaughter has been counting down the weeks until she turns eight in July, just as her cousin Emily reminded us multiple times that she would be turning eight in May, a month after we had returned to Canada from Japan. Their excitement is infectious, yet at the same time, I can’t help but remember being a little girl just as excited for my birthdays. There’s a faded photograph of the year I turned three that I sometimes look at, trying to remember that little girl, blonde hair in Shirley Temple style ringlets, topped with a giant hair ribbon. My aunt’s picnic table nearby is piled with gaily wrapped gifts and a chocolate cake has been placed in front of me for the photo opportunity. I look, frankly, a little stunned.
It wouldn’t be until I neared five that my birthday excitement began to bloom. Turning five meant school, and there, my kindergarten teacher had a big wooden cake with 6 candles on it–always lit on the day of a student’s birthday, and “Happy Birthday” sung by the entire class. Oh, how I wanted those candles lit for me too! I sport an ear-to-ear grin on my face. Those were the long ago years I eagerly counted the days until my next birthday, becoming a “big” girl with each year promising many more possibilities than the one before. I was ready then, even impatient, to claim older age. Not so much anymore.
Are we ever ready for the changes life presents to us? It’s never either/or. Each stage of life has its challenges, but there are rewards too. These days, I’m quite content to embrace the title, “Gramma,” but on the other hand, I am less enthusiastic about some of the inevitable growing older that is mine now: the relentless pull of gravity, loss of muscle tone, and the silvering of my hair, regular visits with my cardiologist, eyeglasses for reading and computer work, the stiffness in my joints on cold mornings. It all reminds me of a condition I thought belonged only to others like my grandparents. Ready or not, none of us escapes aging.
Yet no matter how old I get, every birthday reminds me of others past. Memories come alive: the scent of chocolate as my mother baked my birthday cake, the candle flames dancing while everyone sang to me, shutting my eyes, wishing as hard as I could for something I wanted to happen. And each time my grandchildren sing “Happy Birthday “enthusiastically serenade me over the telephone, my mind races back to birthdays of long ago. Whether good memories or sad, birthdays and anniversaries are full of story. And just singing–or having sung to you– “Happy Birthday to you…”can ignite memories of events, people and places in your past.
I credit Roger Rosenblatt’s wise little book, Unless It Moves the Human Heart (Harper Collins, 2011), with the inspiration to try out a birthday prompt with my writing groups. As Rosenblatt described it, he would begin by asking if anyone in his class had recently celebrated—or was about to–a birthday. Then he began singing, surprising his students:
I…then burst into song: “Happy Birthday to You.” They [his students] give me the he’s-gone-nuts look I’ve come to cherish over the years. I sing it again. “Happy Birthday to You. Anyone had a birthday recently? Anyone about to have one?” …just sit back and see what comes of listening to this irritating, celebratory song you’ve heard all your lives” (pp.39-40).
When I first tried the exercise, my students also looked at me with curiosity as I began singing before laughing a little and joining in.“Now let’s write,” I said as our singing ended. “What memories do you have when you hear “Happy Birthday to you?” I wrote with the group, curious to see where the prompt would take me. I couldn’t write fast enough it seemed, as I recalled the blue bicycle waiting for me the morning of my seventh birthday, a surprise party my husband and daughters managed to pull off few years ago, the long-ago headline in my small town newspaper’s society page: “Sharon Ann Bray turns six today,” (my aunt Verna was the society editor), even a rather dismal birthday in junior high school, when I’d been bullied. one memory spilled out after another.
Each time I have used this same prompt with different writing groups, the responses are similar, filled with many memories written and shared. Yet as inspirational as his exercise is, Rosenblatt isn’t the only writer who has used birthdays as inspiration for poetry and prose. If you explore the offerings of The Academy of American Poets,or The Poetry Foundation, for example, you’ll discover William Blake, Sylvia Plath, Christina Rossetti and many others poets were inspired by birthdays. I’m especially fond of Ted Kooser’s “A Happy Birthday,” a short poem that captures how a birthday triggers retrospection.
This evening, I sat by an open window
and read till the light was gone and the book
was no more than a part of the darkness.
I could easily have switched on a lamp,
but I wanted to ride this day down into night,
to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page
with the pale gray ghost of my hand.
(In Delights & Shadows, 2004)
It’s no wonder birthdays inspire poetry: birthdays also reflect the passage of time, aging and change, for example, here’s an excerpt from Joyce Sutphen’s “Crossroads:”
The second half of my life will be black
to the white rind of the old and fading moon.
The second half of my life will be water
over the cracked floor of these desert years.
(In: Straight out of View, 2001)
Or, as Billy Collins muses in his poem, “Cheerios,” the discovery one is growing older may not just be about one’s actual birthday:
One bright morning in a restaurant in Chicago
as I waited for my eggs and toast,
I opened the Tribune only to discover
that I was the same age as Cheerios.
(In: Poetry, September 2012)
Well, I’m in no hurry, unlike my grandchildren, to celebrate another birthday. Yesterday’s celebrations will hold me for a good long while, but in the meantime, I have a few memories that surfaced last night as my husband and I talked about this birthday and others before; I have some writing to do.
Writing Suggestions:
This week, Even though your birthday or an anniversary is not yet here, let birthdays be the trigger that gets you writing.
- Hum the birthday tune, or if you’re feeling brave, sing it: “Happy Birthday to you…”
- Or begin with a sentence such as “On the day I turned ___, and keep writing.
- Take stock of the memories, good or bad, a birthday ditty evokes. Whether you will soon be celebrating a birthday or anniversary or have recently joined in birthday celebrations for family and friends, explore your remembrances of past birthdays or anniversaries. In those memories, remember a story or poem might be lurking. Why not write one?
