Toads-in-the-Hole

Today is my twenty-eighth birthday, and Joel has joyfully pranced about all day making generous allowances in his daily routine to honor the birth of yours truly. This morning he awoke me with all the cheerfulness of a Labrador, shoving a new, crimson pair of haus-schuhe onto my snoozing feet as he bellowed, “Ready for Coffee?”

I must admit the celebration of birthdays are as important to me today as they were when I was a young slip of a girl.

To me, there’s something about the sacredness, the significance of the exact day of a person’s shift from sixteen to seventeen or ninety-two to ninety-three. It’s the celebration of an origin or a commencement, when people magically and mysteriously move from an idea to a reality. On some matters, we humans are inflexible, and birthdays fall high on the list for me.

Joel, on the other hand, is perfectly content and pleased to pass the annual date of his birth without so much as a peep of well-wishes from loved ones (always excepting that all-important rite of passage that happens at midnight on one’s twenty-first year), preferring to celebrate with cake, booze, and presents when the mood and convenience strike.

It’s tough to say where our differences developed, but perhaps it’s enough just to say that they exist …

In years past, I think that I may have been a bit of a bother or a downright annoyance to Joel in my insistence on candles and felicitations on his birthday, July 24th, especially if that day happened to fall on a Monday or an Exam Eve or friend’s wedding celebration. In years bygone, I know I have been disappointed if I’ve had to wait to celebrate my birthday until the 15th or, even worse, celebrate my birthday early.

So in celebration of my special day, I’d like to honor my own dear valiant heart who sacrificed a Saturday of alimentary canal study (and World of Warcraft) to make me blueberry waffles, indulge window shopping downtown, play a round of Settlers of Catan, and to take in a foreign film.

I know that his effort must have been great … I just found him deep in sleep, at three o’ clock in the afternoon.