Childhood Birthday Parties - by Mom

Personal History Assignment: Childhood Birthday Parties

            I don’t remember any of my own birthday parties.  I know I had some when I was very small, one or two years old, because I have seen photos and old home-movies of them.  But I believe all my “memories” of the events are actually memories of  the recorded images and my parents’ stories.

            Our own family tradition of letting the One Year Old and the Two year old Birthday child sitting in front of the cake and taking a bite or a handful comes from my own first or second birthday.  Somewhere there are pictures of that, and if I have any memory of that at all, it is of the delight and laughter surrounding that moment. I seem to experience a certain elation at being the center of so much unmixed happy attention, and in my character there are echoes of  that “unconditional positive regard” as a therapist might characterize it.  Or we could just call it love. 

            But when I hear a comedian or an actor talking about the high they feel from applause, this moment of the birthday  attention resonates of that kind of crazy happiness. But again, I think its just from the oral and photo history, not from actual memory.

            As for the birthday parties of friends, I can’t say I remember any.  There were sleepovers, and they may have been associated with birthdays,  but I just don’t recall.  I don’t recall mothers bringing cupcakes to school for children’s birthdays, as I often did for my own children.

            Perhaps none of this happened for me because I was the oldest and my mom didn’t have a lot of experience.  It might be that because my birthday was in the summer, there was no opportunity to invite schoolmates.

            In any case, I know that I was determined as a new mother to make every birthday as special as I could.  I can even say I felt a little competitive about it—competing not so much with specific friends or neighbors, but with an ideal birthday party in the cosmos.  This ideal was always at war with my frugality and the more practical side of my nature, so while I often thought of extravagant favors and decorations, when it cam right down to the purchase, I was more inclined toward the “less is more” philosophy.  Again, I would have to look at the photos to recall the details.  I just know that I wanted every birthday of every child to be a celebration of his or her life and  the good fortune that was ours in having that wonderful small person in our lives.  I’m quite sure I always went to bed with a bundle of emotions that included delight, satisfaction and the certainty that the event had fallen short in many nameless ways.  But that didn’t keep me from wanting to go all out again the next time!