Birthdays begin in the horizon, approaching slowly as plans are considered, options explored. Anniversaries are another beast. I don’t mean for a wedding, more for a death, or some brutal moment that is best served cold without any fanfare. It was V’s birthday last week, and we celebrated in so many ways. There were moments when she stared at me with those now-nine-year-old eyes and I knew in my heart this was a good one, maybe her best birthday ever. And then, a few days later I understood we have been here for two full years now, and the anniversary of that white knuckle flight had passed quietly, only surfacing because I could not imagine flying before her birthday, and yet we did. They are intertwined, this bitter and this sweet.
The salt and the sugar look the same unless you know which bowl is which.
She builds a menu for me to cook, and we do most of it together, mixing and kneading and stirring and chopping in the kitchen for a good day or two. She separates eggs now, without breaking the yolks. She measures flour on the scale, whooping and jumping around when the little counter clicks to the perfect amount. Who knew that spooning out exactly 250 grams of flour was such a victory? She does.
It is bizarre to think that in a year she will be ten, because after ten comes an avalanche of teenage dilemmas that no parent is actually ready for. At that point you just surf the waves into shore on blind faith and try not to spiral out.
It is a relief to skip over the anniversary of the flight, the big move, the mass exodus, everyone like rabbits looking for holes to hide in for who knew how long. It would be for three months, maybe six we told ourselves, and then that slow undertow that told us it was already a year and there is no way back any more, just forward, just here, while loved ones have their birthdays on the other side of the fence, messages arriving at all hours, hushed phone calls, and never any answers just where you sleep, and where your kids go to school and will we get to the beach this summer?
Who knows.
There’s a lot of heartbreak between the lines of this one. I need to go into the archives and read more about the exodus and that trauma.
In the more immediate- happy birthday to V! “Nine is Fine.” I wish someone had warned me that you only really have your children until they’re 10. As you eluded to here, after that, it’s all a wild ride. Might be able to squeak a few more years out before the world and hormones does their number on her but for now, relish the pigtails, the easy amusement, the look in her eyes that still says you wear a cape.
https://youtu.be/P5AuFDHdrrg?si=PLr_O5SkipcvyErX