Today is my 34th birthday, and the last 20 have been a journey in recovery. It goes without saying that birthdays are hard after your birth-mother dies. This day ties us together. Over the past 20 years I have tried many ways to work on the awful cloud of sadness that covers this day. It is like my outsides are in sunshine and happiness and my insides are being sucked into a black hole. Maybe it is the point in time in which she died, because there are so many things about my day of birth that I wonder about that only she could answer. I never asked; I was young. I am not a birth-mother, so I have no idea what that feels like, but I know that the bond between mother and child is an amazing thing. I often wonder about my children--as they get older how they will deal with the loss surrounding the day of their birth?
What I remember of my birthday when she was alive is cloudy. I remember a few birthday parties that I think are the root of some of my OCD behaviors. I remember her working very hard on one birthday party in which she turned the back yard into a carnival with lots of different games, most of which involved balloons. For those who don't know, I have a HORRIBLE balloon phobia (globophobia), and which came first--the party or the phobia--I will never know. That is one of those questions she might have been able to answer. I know about half of that birthday I was locked in the bathroom because the guests wanted to surprise me with something (enter claustrophobia and fear of surprises). (As far as I know, my birthday has no ties to my bufonophobia.) After that birthday we started having just family parties, in other words, they would say "Happy Birthday!", I would get cake and usually mom would bring me out with one of my friends to a dinner/movie. One year it was the circus--but this blog is getting long so let's not go there. I DON'T LIKE CIRCUSES. 
After mom died I was always at camp for my birthday. Awwwww......camp birthdays. If I could, they would all be camp birthdays. My camp birthday memories are my best. At camp you are so busy that you can't sit and wonder. Everyone knows it is your birthday, and they all sing and say happy birthday, you get cake, there are NO BALLOONS! and no surprises. When I say this I worry that I hurt my wife's feelings.
My wife's family is birthday crazy! I must admit, if I was a normal person I would be in heaven. Even with my craziness I have to concede that I have never been so showered with gifts. I am pretty sure Amanda would celebrate the whole month of her birth if she could, and I don't think her parents would tell her not to. This morning I woke up to breakfast for me and breakfast for the kids taken care of, beautiful flowers on the table and lots of hugs and happy birthday greetings. My in-laws drove an hour just to drop off the presents that they had gotten me (yes, presents--they bought me 3 this year) and cake made without sugar because they know I have given it up. My grandmother in-law sends me a card and check every year.
So what to do. After writing this I feel like such a loser moaning about what is lost and not looking at what I have. I guess the problem is I always think of birthdays as the celebration of the day you are born and I guess I should start seeing them as a celebration of the fact that you have made it another year and all that was accomplished over that year. As an adoptive mother I know my bond with my child is as strong as that of a birth-mother (very different I have NO doubt but as strong). I am so grateful for their birth stories and the wonderful women who brought them into this world. But that is not what they celebrate every year--they celebrate the fact that they are older, and how much they have grown.
So here's to 34! May I honor the memory of the women who brought me in to this world by celebrating all that I have been able to see, do and accomplish over the last year.
HOWEVER! PLEASE NO BALLOONS OR PARTIES!!!
