Saturday, October 6, 2007

A Birthday In a Not-So-Foreign-Anymore Land

Birthdays are almost like you’re getting a report card on your life.

How are you doing with your goals? Who remembers the day? What are your priorities? What do you like doing? How do you feel about your place in the world?

These are weighty things that probably cross many of our minds on our birthdays.

Thursday was my birthday, and I know an important handful of people in the United States worried that so far away I would not have a very happy day. I mean, after all, when you are new somewhere, when do you get the chance to drop in casual conversation exactly when that special day is? It always helps to build relationships, and friends write down your birthday, and make you feel especially feted because they remember year after year your birthday.

I doubt it is just me—but a birthday serves as a chance to leaf through the scrapbooks of our minds, comparing other days when family and friends celebrate you. My favorite birthday party in my childhood was at my Gram Swinney’s house in Cincinnati. She had a great expansive yard just perfect for parties and playing games, and her house boasted a basement that a whole passel of 3rd graders could fill (and not disturb anyone else on the quiet lane). I am pretty sure McDonald’s catered that party (the quintessential suburban birthday grub!) and my mother headed creative games involving costumes and props. But even then, in the 3rd grade, I wondered, are these invitees my best friends for this year? Who are going to be my best friends at the end of 3rd grade? I always imagined it might be better to have had a spring birthday so one could know for sure who had made the cut for that school year. I know—I worry too much.

There was another early October in my childhood when my mother prominently placed in the living room the largest box I had ever seen—tantalizing me about what great present might lie in the elaborately-wrapped-from-McAlpin’s box. It seemed like it was there for weeks. When the cake-and-ice-cream time came, I practically burst with excitement to discover two very big, and oh, two very disappointing-to-me pillows for my bed. So much for whatever gift had been conjured in my mind!

When I turned 16 my mother planned a surprise party for me with all my new friends at high school—many of them actors with me in my first high school play. The party was on the Friday after my Wednesday birthday. It was exciting. But I remember on the actual day I wriggled out of a family dinner so I could go have pizza with those juniors and seniors about whom I thought had hung the moon. Sigh—what I wouldn’t give now to have one more dinner with my mother and bask in her radiance. I am sure my family was disappointed as their teen-age son cast them aside for the glories of high school friendships.

In the mid-1980s, in my junior year of college, I had embarked on a year away from Denison University. I was spending the autumn in Chicago, and the spring in Salzburg, Austria. That meant I had to hope someone found out about my birthday early in the Chicago semester, so I could have some joy come early October. Oh, the angst over these moves and hoping someone would discover that date of October 4th! Someone did find out my birthday, and my new group of friends with the Newberry Library thought it would be funny to spend the day ignoring me—so I had no idea that they knew it was my birthday indeed—and then have a surprise party for me that night. Note to all the readers here—never do that to someone who likes to be celebrated!

As the pages turn in that psychic scrapbook, I remember that beloved Denison clique finding a gelato place in Columbus in 1985 with which to surprise me and indulge my ever-so-sophisticated palate with Italian gelato; I remember my Gastonia, NC friend Cookie surprising me with my first (and probably only) pair of designer trousers; I remember the time my mother and father drove to North Carolina to celebrate with me my quarter-century birthday; I remember a year when my play cast at Charlotte Latin School all made cards and gave me an autographed soccer ball (they got the biggest kick—pun intended—about whether or not I had actually played soccer in my childhood—they contended I was the kid who ran out at halftime with the orange slices. I really did play soccer, just to relieve any doubts in your minds) and my student Chuck sang to me a Broadway song, “You’re Nothin’ Without Me!” In 1994 I spent the whole evening sitting at my desk at my apartment in New York taking calls—a great birthday since I got to talk to a host of friends and family. I remember after I moved to Tarrytown and Hackley, the stalwart friends Mary and Catherine and Liz and Chuck who never failed to call me on the day and send birthday greetings.

In the New York chapter of my life, there were the splashy trips to Broadway plays and restaurants like Stone Barns at Blue Hill, the restaurant on the grounds of the Rockefeller estate. Oh, and there was the year that all my friends assumed someone else had “claimed” me for my birthday, and I was walking around campus at sunset a little dejected because as it turned out, no one had invited me out. A colleague from school, a math teacher named Dianne stopped me and said, “Isn’t it your birthday, John? Who’s taking you out?” Yes, I had to embarrassingly say that, well, there were no plans in the works. Dianne, gracious and supremely kind, offered to take me out. “Do you want to go for Thai food?” What a kind gesture.

Last year my friends Anne and Peter took me out on my birthday to their club, the Ardsley Country Club, for dinner with our friend Joan Fox. It was a divine meal, like many they shared with me at their club. We sat on the terrace of the club, high over the meadows and then the Hudson River, marveling at the sunset. There was a strange feeling in the air—can’t quite call it tension, or excitement, but there was a little something. That week, Peter had read the article in The New Yorker that prompted him to call his old college friend Eric, the man founding a new school in Jordan. We four sat there enjoying the fruits of a decade-long friendship, not even needing to say everything on our minds—friends usually intuit many things in such moments. This opportunity in Jordan seemed awfully exciting, but would we be together on another October 4th birthday? Anne toasted me, and commented that certain friendships last forever, and knew ours resided in that category. It was a sweet birthday evening.

Perhaps my favorite birthday tradition of all is one my mother started somewhere along the way, decades ago. The night before my birthday, as I went to bed, she would me bid me good-night, “Good night little 9 year old,” the night before I became 10. Every year she would ring out the old year with that exclamation. I remember I really started enjoying it when I graduated college, and she called, “Good night little 22 year old,” the night before I became 23—what a way to line up all the birthdays, and report cards of your life.

As my mother became a little less able to command her speech, I remember an October 3rd when I got a call from sister Elizabeth, “Good night little 39 year old,” the night before I became 40. We cried a little about this changing-of-the-guard, but also rejoiced that the tradition would not founder. This last week, she casually said, “Remember to call me on October 3rd.” (It is a little aggravating, but I cannot receive actual calls just yet—just voicemails.) I called, and the tradition continued.

A week or two ago a few students and I were talking, and the subject of birthdays came up. A couple boys were excited that my birthday was nearly upon us. When we went to school meeting on Thursday, October 4, two boys asked to lead the meeting, and invited the whole school to sing to me and wish me a Happy Birthday. Elizabeth, a recent Yale graduate, and one of my best new friends here at KA, asked if I had plans for dinner. She wanted us to go out in Amman. Thursday night there were 15 of us to celebrate my birthday—at Fuddrucker’s, an American chain restaurant with really good hamburgers and shakes.

Since it is Ramadan, there are rules about going out to restaurants: you may arrive at a restaurant before sundown, but orders cannot be placed until the prescribed time of sundown. So our group arrived about 6:00, and the place filled up quickly. We sat down, and soon there were maybe 150 people in the restaurant. Waiters rushed to take orders, but reminded us that they could not be placed until sundown. At that sundown moment, soup and dates were available for fasters to break their fast.

We sat and joked and enjoyed a 3-hour dinner of rich camaraderie—people who had not even met each other 10 weeks ago. It was a lovely reminder how much you can grow to appreciate people and get to know people in a relatively short amount of time. It may not have been as posh as a Broadway show, but it was an enjoyable evening out with new friends.

When I got home, I enjoyed emails and calls from family and friends in other parts of the globe. I know that some of you had sent snail-mail cards—but none had arrived by the birthday. Rasha, the mail person at KA reminded me, “John, people don’t work too hard during Ramadan. The cards will come!”

Perhaps the nicest moment of the birthday was when a 9th grade girl slipped me a note during the day. Her note read:

“Dear Mr. John,

Today is 4/10/2007 and its your birthday. I know that its hard for you to celebrate your birthday far from your family, but I just want you to know that we are also your family and we all love you so much. So I want to wish you a Happy Birthday and just enjoy it because its your birthday Mr. John. Your the best history teacher I’ve ever got; I mean it. God Bless, Farah.”



Kids. They’ll get you every time.

In goes another page of the cosmic scrapbook…

2 comments:

My Song said...

How sweet it is...

But John...more than a few of us know what "birthday" mysteries you have kept from others. (LOL) Your secret is safe with me, my love! Hope my snail mail card reaches you soon enough...

Much Love, Do

Neal Hitch said...

I am sorry I did not remember your birthday. But then I never have, have I? But it seams like you have plenty of friends who can fill that spot. This was the best blog entry that I have ever read.

Happy belated Birthday.

Neal