It's my birthday

and here's what I'm thinking about.

On my birthday, please indulge me in this list, an arbitrary number of uncategorized, unsorted, unfiltered memories, gratitudes, wishes, hopes.

1. This year for my birthday, I am going to see a matinee of the new Indiana Jones movie. I’ll plant some flowers I grew from seed into my front yard and do a bit of low-pressure writing. I’ll order fish & chips for dinner, skip the cake in favour of seasonal berries from the farmers’ market (and my own back yard), and put in very little effort to make it fancy, because all I really want is some quiet, some solitude, relaxation, time in my garden, good coffee that doesn’t make me feel anxious (that wish is coming true as I write this), and an evening spent with the beloved trio of dudes I live with. Oh, and champagne. There will also be champagne.

2. One of my big personal projects over the past year has been letting go of things that I don’t need, things that aren’t serving me, or are actively harming me. I’ve let go of a lot. My job. My need to make everything from scratch, every time. My need to overdo all the holidays. Some clothes that don’t fit and a lot of shoes that don’t fit (my feet grew in pregnancy and never, ever shrank back down to their previous size, and I will never forgive the world for not warning me in advance that this is apparently “common”). Household items that hold sentimental value but are actually just cluttering up my mind, as well as my space. So many expectations. So many outdated ambitions that I no longer actually want to pursue. In the coming year, I hope for this trend of letting go to continue.

3. In 2008, when Colin and I had only been dating for about six months, he made me a birthday picnic (I still remember the buttermilk fried chicken!) and we lounged around in the park all day. A few years later, when we were programming a movie theatre together, he organized a secret birthday screening of one of my favourite childhood movies, Labyrinth, and when I walked in, dozens of my friends were in the cinema waiting for me. Colin is so good at gifts. But, back to 2008. That evening, I put on a very colourful dress and we went to my parents’ house where 20 or 30 of my friends descended on us and my mom barbecued one million sausages, and I stayed up incredibly late and had the best time. When I was in my 20s, my parents hosted occasional parties for my friends that we jokingly called “sausages and philosophy,” because there was always barbecue (my mom was born to cook for a horde) and there was always a lot of talk about art, philosophy, politics, etc. In 2008, we hadn’t had one of those parties in a long while, and it felt great to do it again. I miss sausages & philosophy, that time in my life, those feelings, those friends (I’m still friends with most of them, I just don’t see them very often). 2008 remains one of my all-time best birthdays.

4. For the past couple of years I’ve been wanting to start watercolour painting. Why? Who knows! But it’s been a strong desire. I have taken steps. I met up with a more experienced painter friend to get some beginner tips & advice on what to buy. I bought the supplies. As a birthday gift to myself, I’m going to make space in my schedule to actually do it! Oh, the joy of having a hobby that will never turn into a side hustle.

5. More collaborations! I’ve already committed to helping two dear friends produce their short films this year, and I want to do more of this kind of thing. Want to co-write something? Need an editor (for your words, not your moving pictures)? Want to start a podcast? A band? A salon? I’m open to it.

6. I’d like to be more consistent about my consistency. I’ve fallen off and gotten back on so many horses this year. So many habits started and stopped, restarted and re-stopped. And yeah, I’m proud of myself for continuing to get back up. But also frustrated by how easily I fall. Channeling my inner rodeo star and clinging to those bucking broncos in ‘23/24. 

7. The other day, my kid made up a song about a man who goes to the grocery store to buy grapes for his duck. The duck is named Grapes. The song was honestly a banger. I am deeply grateful for his silliness, and I hope he continues to be absolutely ridiculous in the coming year (or, like, forever).

8. I am making three birthday resolutions: to tackle my own ambitions and dreams as seriously as I did my job for the past decade; to read more books but give up more easily on the books that aren’t for me, because my time is precious; to finish writing a book that I hope people will want to read to the very end, and then to sell that book (manifesting some big dreams in ‘23/24).

9. This year, I want to eat more fancy salads, like the ones from The Department of Salad. 

10. On my eighth birthday, we were living in Baghdad, and my mom threw me a birthday party and invited a lot of my classmates from the international school I attended. Eggs were often hard to find at the time (this was during the Iran-Iraq war, so various things were scarce at various times, and occasionally a bomb would drop a couple of KMs away, a story for another day). That July, in the kind of burning heat that folks in the Southwestern US are currently suffering through, my mom somehow found eggs, and made my favourite cake, a light, flourless walnut sponge (the cake layers consist only of ground walnuts, stiffly-whipped egg whites and sugar) with a creamy chocolate filling, a Serbian classic. The filling / frosting didn’t quite hold together, perhaps because of the heat, or perhaps because baking is a precise science and my mom was always a wing-it kind of woman, but either way, the cake fell into a hilarious shape that my father and I lovingly dubbed “the sea cow.” My mom felt extra self-conscious of the aesthetic failure, because one of my friends was the son of a chef who worked at one of the big hotels in town, and she knew he’d be in attendance. The cake was delicious, and everyone loved it. I wish I had a sea cow cake this year.

    

    Left: me and my friend Ingeborg in Iraq, circa 1985. Right: me drunkenly licking icing off my finger in 2008.

11. I’ve never been a person who’s in love with with their own birthday. I like parties, but don’t like being the centre of attention at one. I like presents, but don’t like the pressure of being the only recipient. Holidays are wonderful, birthdays are a bit weird. As I get older, I’m learning to enjoy my birthdays more. Maybe it’s because I feel less self-conscious overall?

12. For my 16th birthday, when I was at the height of my most monstrous teendom, my parents took me to some sort of nature spot, I can’t remember where it was, but it was a beautiful, tranquil place, probably an attempt on their part to chill me the hell out for a few minutes. I do remember that I was a sullen little bitch about it, and they were very patient with me. Now that I’m a parent I feel:

    1. much regret and empathy for what I put my parents through, and

    2. immense worry about what my comeuppance will be when my wild child goes through puberty

13. When I was a kid, I always spent my birthday with my family. Whether I had a party with my friends or not (on the nearest convenient weekend), the actual night of my birthday was always reserved for a special family dinner. Once, when I was an early-adolescent, one of my uncles said, “if you’re still spending your birthdays with your parents when you’re 25, I’ll give you a hundred bucks.” He never gave me the money, but I did win the bet. I’m still doing it.

14. I was born in hospital, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, by Caesarian section. When the nurses woke my mom up after the birth and told her that she had a girl, her only reply was “I know.”