thought for the day...birthdays

as i will be turning 39 in a few hours, i'm not exactly sure how i feel about that yet.  i suppose i should just be happy that i've survived this many years, knock on wood.  And maybe there are a few more still to come.  Oh well.  My birthday is on a Thursday this year, which is the day of the week that i was born on.  i was almost a month overdue.  Of course, these days they don't let mothers go that far over their due date.  i was supposed to be born the 2nd week of November, but waited until December 5th to pop out.  And it was a quick birth as well.  Mom's water broke before 10pm and i was born, breech mind you, just after 1am on the 5th.  Good times  hehe

Anyway, growing up, birthdays were always very important.  And they were always mainly family times.  Mom would cook the favorite meal of whoever's birthday it was and Grandmother would bake and decorate the cake.  My meal was almost always hamburgers....i loved them....still do.  But, it was always such a great time and we have so many pictures of those occasions that i cherish.  i only had two non family parties growing up (in addition to our family ones).  i had a joint birthday/skating party with Darcy in 1st or 2nd grade and a few years later a pizza party with the neighborhood kids.  Both of them were great but never quite took the place of being around the table with the family.

i miss that kind of thing so much.  it's hard not having any family here in Greensboro.  Dad and June are two hours away.  David and Margaret, Pam, Stephen and Henry are two hours in the other direction.  Bill, Heidi and the girls are way off in Indiana.  It makes things hard to try to get away for a birthday celebration.  i've missed almost everyone's this year.

and i realize that family is not always defined by blood.  My friends in the theatre dept at UNCG....we were a family.  It seems like everytime someone had a birthday, something fun was going on.  And that was so nice...but people graduate and move on to other things and those times come to an end.  Later on, as an adult, i, at one time, had a nice tight circle of friends here in town that counted as family.  We'd always do something for one of our birthdays, whether a party or just a dinner or something.  Alas, people move on to different things, different cities, different friends...it's the circle of life.  And now, of course, because i  have to work way too much, i've had to say no to so many invitations, that we don't even get asked anymore.  Oh well.

At one time in my life, birthdays were important events.

i miss that.

tomorrow's just another day