No, it is not my birthday yet. But I got my birthday gift from Joe last night. A few days ago, he approached me with a choice…either he would get me the Canon printer I’ve been drooling over, or an MP3 player.
I love my husband, and he has grown so much as a gift-giver since I’ve known him. It is obvious that he tries pretty darn hard to think up good gifts for me, and I can’t say that I am all that much better than him at finding the right thing always. I do have to brag that he claimed this last birthday of his was The Best Birthday Ever and I’d like to take credit for most of what made him happy. Anyway, part of the fun of a birthday present to me is the surpise of getting it on your birthday. To Joe, I know, the sooner you can get your hands on a new toy and start PLAYING WITH IT, the better. Plus, I think, once he’s made up his mind and picked out a present, he wants the instant gratification of seeing the person happy about getting it. As hard as it is, I really enjoy the anticipation of waiting for the birthday, and celebrating it as an EVENT.
I admittedly have birthday issues. Too many bad birthdays as a child when there were weird fights or blowups, when I got crappy it’s-the-month-after-Christmas-and-the-bills-are-due gifts instead of the comparatively cool stuff that my October-born sister got, and WAY too many birthday cakes that were not right – when all I wanted was a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and some vanilla ice cream, I usually ended up with German Chocolate, some flavour my sister liked, or on one spectacularly weird occasion, a liquor-flavored thing from an expensive bakery. All cakes I’m sure I’d appreciate today as an adult, but not back when I was a kid, and not even today for my birthday.
But back to the story at hand. While the printer is very attractive – I love Canon ink jet printers for photos, and am on my second one at the moment. The newer version has a much higher resolution and some additional features like an extra tray so you can have photo paper and regular paper loaded at all times as well as auto-duplex ability. But when I’m honest with myself, I’m pretty happy with the one I have already, and I do most of my photo printing via shutterfly, which is less expensive in the long run and much more convenient when you’ve put off printing photos till you’ve accumulated a need for 300 prints in one sitting. (Like after a year of not printing out the photos and then deciding to make albums for the grandparents, an uncle, and oh-by-the-way catch up the scrapbook for the kid before the new kid is born.)
The MP3 player seemed more useful since I have an ancient stereo in my car with a tape deck and no CD player. I’ve transferred most of our children’s music CDs to tape, but most of them are one CD to a side of a tape, and when Julie wants to listen to Sesame Street Platinum again without having to hear Wee Sing first, it’s not a pretty sight. So this is definitely something I’ll use on an almost-daily basis. Even though one could argue that it’s not really for *me* since I’m not the one who wants to listen to Sesame Street Platinum – as much as I’d like to be, I’m just not the audiophile that Joe is. I wish I were more able to get into music, but for the most part my preference is NPR in the car, and I do enjoy some older music as well as some of the stuff that Joe exposes me to. I just don’t think about it very much unless it’s put in front of me, and even then, I have a hard time “getting” some of the newer stuff. Embarassing, I know.
But Joe brought home my new toy last night and cracked it open for me, set it up on the computer, even ripped the un-ripped kid’s music CDs to MP3 and transferred it over to my new little toy. He also bought me a converter thingie that looks like a cassette tape that one plugs into the thing and lets you play it in the car. We tried it out today on our brief trip to the Rec Center to play with the other kiddies. It’s a pretty cool little toy – one that lets me istantly gratify the kid when she wants to listen to Rubber Duckie for the third time in a row.
Honey, if you’re reading this, thanks for the new toy. It’s wonderful. And sorry, but I have to admit I’m a little disappointed that I won’t have much birthday celebration to look forward to. Maybe we’ll all go out to dinner using the Timberlodge Steakhouse gift certificate we got for Xmas. Nice not to have to cook, but steak is not my favorite meal – it’s yours. I’ll get my damned chocolate cake, but that’s because I signed up to bring ECFE treats the day before my birthday and I’m going to make my own awesome chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing.
This bitterness I’m feeling in my semi-shrivelled little heart is not because my husband gave me a lovely birthday gift a few weeks early. It’s leftover shit from a crappy, bitter childhood (one that was much crappier and bitter than getting the wrong present or kind of cake, but that I’m not going to discuss in such a public venue).
The upside is that I have had another wonderful year of my adult life to celebrate. I got to be a stay-at-home mom to a wonderful little girl who loves me and asks me to “kiss it” when she bites her lip or tongue. I got my way on the new house we bought, including designing my own newly-renovated kitchen. We are all healthy, we have enough money to get by, plus enough for expensive little birthday toys and we went on a frivolously expensive vacation since my last birthday. I have a huge birthday gift coming up in another month – the gift of a new baby to love and hold and appreciate no matter how hard it will be, and the knowledge that it will all be worth it. And I have a husband who loves me, whom I trust implicitly, who puts up with all my little quirks and tells me I’m beautiful and sexy even when I’m pregnant like a beached whale.
If only I can remember and hold on to all of these wonderful truths and many more that make my life rich beyond belief…If only I can continue letting go of all the “gifts” my family of origin gave to me…I think I can. It will be a Happy Birthday.