A lot of people make jokes about how, when you get old, it’s no longer fun to blow out the candles on your birthday cake. But not me. I don’t care if lighting all those candles threatens to turn the icing into a buttery puddle–I want the candles, and I want to make a wish! If I pass out trying to blow out my candles, so be it.

I’ve never been into big birthdays, but at my advanced age (I can hear some people who know me chortling) and in my new role as mother and custodian of Liam’s birthday experiences, I no longer expect fireworks beyond birthday candles. Just a cake of some kind and a little quality time with my boys. 

That said, may I state for the record that a surprise birthday party does NOT make up for pretending all day to have forgotten a person’s birthday. Not that I’m speaking from experience here. I did not walk around with a lump in my throat for 10 hours during sophomore year in college when nobody said “happy birthday,” and I did not buy myself a cupcake, and I DEFINITELY did not cry out of relief (“I do exist!) when the surprise was revealed. Right… it was a little like that youtube video a while back of the girl crying (really crying) when she finds out she’s going to Disneyworld. Only… she was, like, 5. And this DIDN’T happen to me when I was, say, 17.

My best birthday gift ever? A marriage proposal from my best-friend and now husband, Arnulfo. It’s possible that this was a little overdue (in my opinion) but NO WAY was it preceeded by any tearful, “are we getting married or what?” conversations. (There is a pattern in the non-events of my life, right…)

But that’s history… And anyway, it was worth the wait. I never would have had enough faith in me to put an expensive ring on my finger while standing on a jety in the Gulf of Mexico, but lucky for us all, I didn’t drop it into the ocean. Whew.