Happy Birthday To Mom

Remember when birthdays meant your whole class came over to play musical chairs and have balloon relays until it was time to blow out the candles on a homemade cake? You anticipated the big day for weeks. As you got older, you invited fewer friends, and they slept over. You ate way too much junk food and played pranks on the poor girl who fell asleep first. In college, birthdays evolved into nights out with drinks . . . so many drinks. That stage lasted a while, maybe until you got married, at which point birthdays usually centered around an intimate dinner for two.

And then you had kids.

Birthdays don’t look the same, do they?

This year on my birthday, my day started with waking four kids to drop them off at three different schools. Then, home to catch up on laundry, to wash the mountain of dishes in the sink, and to log onto Facebook where the influx of birthday wishes reminded me it was a special day. A quick trip to the store, home to make an easy meal that could be eaten between extracurriculars, and off to pick up my middle schooler, then my high schooler, and back to the bus stop for the younger two. From there we flew to batting cage practice, lacrosse practice, and gymnastics . . . then picked everyone back up to fit in a horse lesson and baseball practice.

This didn’t feel like a birthday, but it definitely felt like birthdays have felt since having kids. Don’t get me wrong. I know Moms who instead of having a birthday have a birthweek with celebration upon celebration, so birthdays do still exist post-kids. But sometimes you are too tired to figure out a way to make a big deal when it’s only about you. So you don’t. Which reminds you of those days when birthdays were anticipated for weeks and not just noticed because you logged on to Facebook.

I felt sorry for myself the few seconds that I had free that day, but then it was time to tuck those kiddos into bed. My 10-year old asked me to sign her school notebook, where I found a note from her teacher about how she wasted her whole reading time playing with post-it notes and she got in trouble for it. My daughter then presented her post-it note flower to me, with a message that said I was the Best Mom Ever. She then said, “Don’t be mad, Mom. You’re more important than the dumb book we’re reading.” Love that sassy girl.

Then my 6-year old presented me with a map to follow to find my gift. It had one direction, “Luk behid the vakum.” So we went together to look behind the vacuum, but there wasn’t anything there. This threw my son off for about two minutes until his wrinkled brow cleared. “Oh yeah! I hid it under the table!” where I found a box that my older boys helped him to wrap. Inside was a rainbow painted shell from the river near our house. He was so proud, with good reason as it was glorious in the way that all kids’ handmade gifts are.

When you’re a Mom, you don’t need a nice dinner or a cake with more candles on it than you care to blow out. When you’re a Mom, those kids who you spend your days running to and from everywhere have the power to make your birthday feel like the most magical day of the year.