Luckily, birthdays only come once a year, and I say that because they’re obviously difficult for some people to deal with. Consider Mark. He’s been my husband for about 16 years or so, and while neither of us are good at keeping track of the years we’ve been married or each others’ ages, the dates of our birthdays have been securely stored away to memory.
Until this year.
See, I got a call from my dad last Tuesday saying that he and his wife, Norma, were offering to take Mark and me out for dinner on my birthday. I was thrilled they wanted to drive from Grand Rapids for my birthday and immediately sent Mark an email titled: “Guess what we’re doing Thursday?” My one line message read: “Dad and Norma are taking us to dinner.”
Imagine my surprise when Mark wrote back: “What are they coming into town for?”
So I wrote back that Thursday, the 8th was my birthday. I received no response from Mark and it wasn’t until later, at home, that he admitetd that he remembered my birthday as the 12th for some reason instead of 12/8.
On the morning of my birthday I had to take my mom to a doctor’s appointment and after the appointment, she gave me my birthday card. It was one of those cute, mushy cards and, unfortunately, in my haste to get into work, I left it in her car. More on that later.
Thursday evening came around and Dad called to say that he and Norma were snaggled in traffic a few miles from our house due to an accident and could Mark and I meet them somewhere? Thankfully, the rest of the dinner went off without a hitch.
Two days later, a box arrived containing a gadget from my brother which replaced a gadget I had lost on a fishing trip. There also was a box from my sister and inside, two gifts and an envelope. The envelope was a large one and on the outside was a message explaining that: “Inside the envelope is probably the funniest gift you will get all year, because you are getting it a year early.” She went on to write: “I was kicking myself that I forget it was your 50th birthday and so I did this (indicating what was inside). After I got done, I did the math and realized you were only 49. So I thought I’d send it anyway so you’d get a good laugh. And then, hopefully, be touched.
Inside was:
Indeed, I did laugh. And I was very, very touched.
On Saturday afternoon, three of the four kids came over to celebrate my birthday. My mother also came over. When I opened the birthday cardsI found a card from my mom. I reminded her she’d already given me a card and then saw that the card was the same one I’d gotten on Thursday. She responded to my puzzled look by saying, “Since you left it in my car, you apparently didn’t want it the first time, so I decided to stick it in an envelope and try again.”
In summary, my husband didn’t know when my birthday was, my sister thought I was a year older than I really am, and my mother, well, she’s just a real wit, now isn’t she?