Ahem, good morning. Excuse me while I clear my throat and my head. I am typing this in a throbbing, foggy, somewhat exhausted state.
My bones ache. My lips are chapped. I’m dragging.
Can you feel my joy?
I am writing this the morning after my birthday weekend. That’s right, the bash included two days filled with all of my favorite things — running with a 2-year-old in circles while a tickle monster chased us; playing “we live in a casita” with a 5-year-old; singing lullabies to a newborn; eating copious amounts of tacos, tamales and chocolate cake; playing trivia; walking along Clark Street on a beautiful evening; and, yes, drinking not one but two spicy margaritas.
Even though it means moving my personal atomic clock closer to my own doomsday, I look forward to my birthday each year. I want my day or, in this case, days. I need my day. Truth be told, sometimes I demand my day.
Look, life is hard. For all of us. We have jobs, bills, responsibilities. We spend our free time caring for others. We cook for others, clean for others, worry about others in scary parts of the world.
At night, we lie in bed and fret about things completely out of our control. When someone asks us for a hand, we are there with two, providing goods, services and assistance.
We should be so good to ourselves.
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Birthdays are a way to do that. They can be the happy break we need to rejuvenate, the antidote to the hell life sometimes hurls our way, a break from the mundane, payback for giving the other 364 days a year our all.
Birthdays are equal opportunity celebrations. Everybody gets one. And yet they are special and unique to each of us. They should be celebrated that way.
I know some people dislike big shows of emotion and some cringe at being the center of attention. And I know others who can’t get enough affirmation and love.
I am not advocating a bacchanalia. You don’t have to be like Justin Bieber and rent an island for hundreds of your best friends. If your idea of bliss is being alone with a book, do it. Take the day off. Give yourself what you need.
In my mind, birthdays should be embraced like vacations. A departure from the weight of everyday responsibilities and commitments. A day filled with favorites.
It may seem self-serving until you run the numbers. Even if you live to be 80, you’ll have oh-maybe 70 birthdays that you are both cognizant of and able to appreciate. Seventy days out of 29,200 days on this earth is not even 1% of your life.
Self-centeredness? More like self-care.
If the pandemic taught us anything, it is that tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us. I know too many people who died in 2020 and 2021.
And, right now, I know too many who are struggling with cancer, dementia, diabetes, heart disease and other issues that can reach up and snatch them from this world at any moment. Who knows what lies in wait for any of us?
I spent my 2021 birthday in quarantine. This year, dining at a restaurant on busy Clark Street felt so good.
None of us knows when our last birthday will be, which is why we should treat each of them as if it is precisely that.
We need to make the most of the time we have, whether we’re 5 years old or 83, whether we have 50 years ahead of us or five.
My mother used to get dressed up on her birthday and set the camera on the dining room table. She expected us to celebrate her. Sometimes we’d chuckle about her insistence but now I get it. She needed that and we always came through.
My husband, raised by a single dad, never had a birthday party growing up. When he turned 50, my daughters and I threw him a huge surprise bash in our back yard. About 150 people came and toasted him. He never saw it coming. But he talks about it to this day.
Even if you have to plan the celebration and do all the work yourself, do it. You already do so much for others. Do it for you.
I know people who prefer small and quiet to big and loud. And that’s totally fine.
I also know people who go all out and celebrate their day over the course of a week. That’s OK, too.
Because you can have ordinary any time. But you can’t have your birthday more than once a year.
If you don’t already, start seizing your day.
Be happy. Be proud. Be all about you.
When it’s over, take off the party hat, put down the fork and pick up that sack of responsibilities with renewed strength and vigor.
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Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years.