Brick

Copy­right 2005 Ben S. Pollock

Mon­day, Novem­ber 7, 2005. Now I can under­stand­ing the irri­tat­ing habit of young brides to have every­thing “per­fect” on their wed­ding day, the heck with the con­fused groom and the belea­guered par­ents. Birth­days are like that.

At least for me, every year I want my birth­day to be per­fect, a cel­e­bra­tion of myself — not by oth­ers, that would be an ego thing and in a super­fi­cial sense — but of myself for myself. It’s very ego-driven, in the Freudian ego sense, though. The baby, who can­not see, can­not sense out­side of him­self, wants all good for himself.

If I want to sleep soundly the night going into my birth­day morn­ing, it should be so. If I say I want to not be alone, after years of bach­e­lor­hood, the spouse should make every effort, and suc­ceed. If I want a per­fect pizza for sup­per, by gosh, it has to come from the local joint and no fran­chise outlet.

I never have had a per­fect birth­day, by these lights.

Maybe it stems from my 10th birth­day. It was a school­day the morn­ing of Nov. 6, 1967. Mom and Dad had presents for me and as our tra­di­tion I opened them in their bed­room. I already knew that in a few weeks an Aus­tralian ter­rier would be flown from a breeder in St. Louis, my first dog all my own. (George was pure­bred but had the wrong pro­por­tions for show­ing so he was not expen­sive, the breed cho­sen because my dad enjoyed an “Aussie” owned by an Eng­lish offi­cer with whom he served in Afghanistan, in WWII.)

The toy and clothes are unwrapped and delighted over, and it was time for a quick break­fast before school. But Mom takes me aside a moment: Dur­ing the night the nurs­ing home called to say Dad’s mom had passed. Mom strongly sug­gested I give Dad a big hug and say, “I’m sorry.” I did.

I’ve been con­fused about birth­days since, never got the hang of them.

They’re so much like reg­u­lar days. You have a good meal and con­ver­sa­tion, you have an excel­lent bike ride in unsea­son­ably warm weather, and there went three or four hours (a half day, vir­tu­ally) of your pre­cious birth­day, the annual cel­e­bra­tion of one­self, spent. As a grown-up, most years you have to work on your birth­day, where with luck, no co-worker remem­bers so nei­ther you nor they need go through the motions of sin­cer­ity. You finally have an extended con­ver­sa­tion long-distance with a sib­ling after too many months, and that is so wel­come, yet bit­ter­sweet: You’re not chil­dren together anymore.

Maybe that’s all there is to it. All too soon, it’s the sev­enth of Novem­ber. What a relief. –30–