Day of birth
I remember being six, and reading a story in my elementary school reader about the magical age of seven and how excited I was that I would get to be this magical number. I can feel the glossy smooth pages under my fingers still, and the brightly colored drawing of a girl with a cupcake above the wide-spaced paragraphs of the short story meant to help us learn how to read. That was the first time I really remember anything about birthdays.
***
I wake up on Saturday next to him, rubbing my eyes and recalling my brain back to my body. I've asked not to make choices, to have someone else at the helm. It feels a little bit forced, so I try not to push that too hard. I'm given two options for outdoors, and one for indoors. I want to be out, I want to be doing something, so I choose the zoo after a little careful thought. No doubt Fort Sumter would have been just as good, but I wanted engagement and happiness across the board.
I chose right.
When figuring out the cars, the headcount split us evenly into four boys and four girls. Well, then, it's a girls day for the truck. The cousins can't be more excited. M and C have never been in the truck, and they're ooing and ahhing over her when we climb in. Good idea, girls, you're only gaining good ground on me here. C is petting the armrest and I chuckle. Big Red is a pretty good in with kids.
At first the drive is a little awkward. M and C haven't spent a lot of time with me, so they don't know what kind of adult I am. So I get K to start talking and that naturally opens the door for them. We talk about cars on the road, lawns, houses, and wishing we had "people to mow the grass" money. They start telling jokes and getting comfortable.
At the zoo it's all pleasure. We feed and pet the animals, letting lemurs and monkeys take special food from our palms. There are baby bunnies and foxes, snakes and chickens, and all kinds of docile creatures to look at. My partners are roaming around together, herding children, watching me discover what's in the next exhibit.
This is what I wanted. What I'd always thought of when people asked me how big of a family I wanted. This would have been the perfect visualization of that answer. So many different personalities coming out, so many looks of joy.
By the end of the zoo, people are hungry, and the decision is made to go to a buffet style restaurant. Matt again splits the bill evenly, showing that he's taken to heart some of our deeper conversations. Things that are important to me. Something he would have struggled with in the past he is visibly at ease with now. Another gift.
We sit to the table and I feel it all swell up in my heart. So much that my knees threaten to stop holding me upright if I try to stand. How do I even put into words how this felt? It was here that I saw the future. That I caught a glimpse of what could come. Sitting at the cabin, these faces I adore in the places of my ancestors, of my kin, looking to me and each other the way my family did, from the exact chairs in the exact places that haven't moved in almost a century.
Was that the moment that I really started to love C and M as well? When this family dove to an even deeper level for me? If I get a little weak-kneed at a buffet, imagine what I'd feel at the old table. Would that be the galvanizing moment then? A point of no return, not for me as I've already reached that, but a way for my ancestors to acknowledge these humans as wholly mine even though we share no blood?
I'm surrounded by history of my family, a bible that tallies the births, deaths and marriages. The family crest. The cabin that has become the ancestral seat. Will this then, this trip next year, will that be the full acknowledgement as binding as any formal ritual? Or am I merely caught up in my own feelings? What if they get there and feel nothing?
I digress. My mind spirals a bit into things that haven't yet happened.
But to the things that have, we return.
We leave dinner and come back to the house. Matt and T play video games and I relax, dozing happily on whatever pleasant thoughts swam through my head. None seemed to stick for long, just the overarching feeling of joy.
In the evening, we brought out the cake and I sat surrounded while they sang. I laughed when, just like the birthdays of my past, people were conflicted on what to call me on the "dear" part, and so the result was discordant but amusing.
Was I really so lucky to be sitting there with this family? That it had all come together without me directing it? I said I wanted to go to the zoo, not go to the zoo and have the kids say sweet things and ask to ride with me and ask me about my family and then have them sit next to me for the cake part and make sure they think I'm cool.
This is just who they are, and I don't think I could have asked for more.
That night, T and I sat down into a tub and talked. We'd had a hard week, something that's unfortunately not as rare as I'd like it to be with my fragile mentality. He's in a rough place, and it can be hard for me to not take that to a personal place.
"Talking with you is like walking through land mines." I can still feel the sting in my throat but I managed to talk around it. I know I'm a lot to handle. Sometimes, where the damage has been greatest, it takes a long long time to make a little bit of progress. Who wouldn't get fed up?
I think we at least got somewhere with thoughts on the future. There are details to be ironed out, thoughts to be had, trust to be built in certain places, but overall it's pretty steady and functional. Was I really thinking of bring this family to the cabin? If I thought he had power before, he'd have a lot more after that.
The following day, my last day of 38, we went to a class in Georgetown and sushi in Myrtle Beach after. I'm still processing things I witnessed, things I felt, things I picked up on that I don't think would be constructive to be placed down here. But I was happy to sit to dinner with T and S, to hear the way they talked of family, of vague future, and how things mesh well.
There was no silence, just easy conversation and delicious food. What a strange place to be in, and yet it's better to be here than to not have it at all. What will 39 hold for me?
***
I wake up on Saturday next to him, rubbing my eyes and recalling my brain back to my body. I've asked not to make choices, to have someone else at the helm. It feels a little bit forced, so I try not to push that too hard. I'm given two options for outdoors, and one for indoors. I want to be out, I want to be doing something, so I choose the zoo after a little careful thought. No doubt Fort Sumter would have been just as good, but I wanted engagement and happiness across the board.
I chose right.
When figuring out the cars, the headcount split us evenly into four boys and four girls. Well, then, it's a girls day for the truck. The cousins can't be more excited. M and C have never been in the truck, and they're ooing and ahhing over her when we climb in. Good idea, girls, you're only gaining good ground on me here. C is petting the armrest and I chuckle. Big Red is a pretty good in with kids.
At first the drive is a little awkward. M and C haven't spent a lot of time with me, so they don't know what kind of adult I am. So I get K to start talking and that naturally opens the door for them. We talk about cars on the road, lawns, houses, and wishing we had "people to mow the grass" money. They start telling jokes and getting comfortable.
At the zoo it's all pleasure. We feed and pet the animals, letting lemurs and monkeys take special food from our palms. There are baby bunnies and foxes, snakes and chickens, and all kinds of docile creatures to look at. My partners are roaming around together, herding children, watching me discover what's in the next exhibit.
This is what I wanted. What I'd always thought of when people asked me how big of a family I wanted. This would have been the perfect visualization of that answer. So many different personalities coming out, so many looks of joy.
By the end of the zoo, people are hungry, and the decision is made to go to a buffet style restaurant. Matt again splits the bill evenly, showing that he's taken to heart some of our deeper conversations. Things that are important to me. Something he would have struggled with in the past he is visibly at ease with now. Another gift.
We sit to the table and I feel it all swell up in my heart. So much that my knees threaten to stop holding me upright if I try to stand. How do I even put into words how this felt? It was here that I saw the future. That I caught a glimpse of what could come. Sitting at the cabin, these faces I adore in the places of my ancestors, of my kin, looking to me and each other the way my family did, from the exact chairs in the exact places that haven't moved in almost a century.
Was that the moment that I really started to love C and M as well? When this family dove to an even deeper level for me? If I get a little weak-kneed at a buffet, imagine what I'd feel at the old table. Would that be the galvanizing moment then? A point of no return, not for me as I've already reached that, but a way for my ancestors to acknowledge these humans as wholly mine even though we share no blood?
I'm surrounded by history of my family, a bible that tallies the births, deaths and marriages. The family crest. The cabin that has become the ancestral seat. Will this then, this trip next year, will that be the full acknowledgement as binding as any formal ritual? Or am I merely caught up in my own feelings? What if they get there and feel nothing?
I digress. My mind spirals a bit into things that haven't yet happened.
But to the things that have, we return.
We leave dinner and come back to the house. Matt and T play video games and I relax, dozing happily on whatever pleasant thoughts swam through my head. None seemed to stick for long, just the overarching feeling of joy.
In the evening, we brought out the cake and I sat surrounded while they sang. I laughed when, just like the birthdays of my past, people were conflicted on what to call me on the "dear" part, and so the result was discordant but amusing.
Was I really so lucky to be sitting there with this family? That it had all come together without me directing it? I said I wanted to go to the zoo, not go to the zoo and have the kids say sweet things and ask to ride with me and ask me about my family and then have them sit next to me for the cake part and make sure they think I'm cool.
This is just who they are, and I don't think I could have asked for more.
That night, T and I sat down into a tub and talked. We'd had a hard week, something that's unfortunately not as rare as I'd like it to be with my fragile mentality. He's in a rough place, and it can be hard for me to not take that to a personal place.
"Talking with you is like walking through land mines." I can still feel the sting in my throat but I managed to talk around it. I know I'm a lot to handle. Sometimes, where the damage has been greatest, it takes a long long time to make a little bit of progress. Who wouldn't get fed up?
I think we at least got somewhere with thoughts on the future. There are details to be ironed out, thoughts to be had, trust to be built in certain places, but overall it's pretty steady and functional. Was I really thinking of bring this family to the cabin? If I thought he had power before, he'd have a lot more after that.
The following day, my last day of 38, we went to a class in Georgetown and sushi in Myrtle Beach after. I'm still processing things I witnessed, things I felt, things I picked up on that I don't think would be constructive to be placed down here. But I was happy to sit to dinner with T and S, to hear the way they talked of family, of vague future, and how things mesh well.
There was no silence, just easy conversation and delicious food. What a strange place to be in, and yet it's better to be here than to not have it at all. What will 39 hold for me?
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