April 17, 2002

Adult birthdays ho-hum occasions

By GARRET LEIVA
Herald editor
       Birthdays are like bellybuttons and bad similes - everyone has one and must occasionally endure the other.
      Tomorrow at this time I'll be another year older and probably none the wiser. No need to send in the clowns, however, since my birthdays are already met with a touch less merriment and a tad more melancholy. Instead, a card will suffice - preferably without words inside that rhyme with nicer.
      Simply put adulthood birthdays lack luster. For some reason, around the time you turn 30 years old birthdays take on a negative connotation. You began going around the bend along with down and over the hill with each passing year. However, the salad days of adulthood are pure gravy for the "Getting Older" greeting card section.
      Perhaps I'm ambivalent about my birthday because as milestones go, marker 32 is merely a bump in the road of life. Or maybe I've realized that my childhood wish for Sea Monkeys isn't going to come true.
      Maudlin as it sounds, I miss certain birthday traditions: Aunt Sherrill's red velvet cake with white frosting, unwrapping gifts with unabashed gusto, being able to blow out the candles - literally. I even miss the off-key sound of Grandma Leiva singing "and many more" at the conclusion of "Happy Birthday."
      In fact, this past weekend we celebrated the family April birthdays with sugar-free apple pie - talk about a bunch of adults. I guess Thomas Wolff was right: you can't go home, at least not for birthday cake shaped like a baseball glove.
      One tradition that does remain is dusting off my bicycle for a ritual birthday ride. Although, I must admit a grown man popping wheelies rides the thin line between nostalgia and nauseating. Especially when I start talking to the neighborhood kids about banana seats and chopper handlebars.
      While it is unlikely that my birthday wish for Steve Austin bionic powers will be granted, I already have the greatest little nine pound present.
      Celebrating a little one's birthday affords adults the opportunity to be a kid again. Come next March, there will be fist-fulls of chocolate cake, drooling over ice cream and crying about irksome gifts - all before Ella gets up from her afternoon nap. I can't wait to help unwrap her first birthday gifts. "Look Ella, a cordless reciprocating saw, just like you wanted honey."
      Of course, childhood birthdays eventually mean planning the precarious "friends come over" party. I'm not sure how I'll fair listening to a screaming gaggle of six-year-old girls while wearing a tiny dunce hat on my head. Indubitably, I do know that no one will ask for an encore performance of Strauss' "The Blue Danube" as played on my right armpit. Hopefully, I can also avoid renting a enervated equine or some Bozo by the hour.
      Regardless of what happens, we will have fun trying to make our little girl's birthday a happy one.
      English poet Alexander Pope once said that birthdays are the funeral of the former year. This obviously coming from someone who didn't put much stock in the phrase "happy birthday." Actually, birthdays are often a chance to bury self-destruction and give life to self-worth; you just won't find many Hallmark cards that say so for $2.95.
      Thankfully, birthdays are also about choosing between chocolate or vanilla ice cream.
      Who knows, perhaps tomorrow I'll take the bike for a spin, call my aunt for her cake recipe and open my birthday cards with unabashed gusto. Afterward, Ella and I can marvel at our bellybuttons without a care or simile in the world.
      Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached by calling 933-1416 or e-mail gleiva@gtherald.com