Birthdays

My birthday is coming up.  Well, sort of.  It's in a month.  But, the point is, I have a birthday in the not terribly distant future.  I'm not really looking forward to it.  I'm normally the person who loves birthdays.  I make a big deal out of everyone's birthday, I make cakes, I organize dinners or gatherings, I spoil people.  I literally remember birth dates for classmates that I went to elementary school with.  I'm not sure why.  I think that, at the core of a birthday, it's a celebration of a person.  It's celebrating that they were born, and they're here, and they matter.  It's kind of like a day of saying "I'm glad you're here, and I'm glad you're in my life".  So, I make a big deal of birthdays.

I have to make a cake for a friend's birthday coming up the first weekend of May, and mine is after that, but I'm not planning anything.  I asked my husband not to plan anything either.  It just doesn't feel important.  In some cases, I feel like inviting anyone to celebrate would just illicit attendance out of some sense of obligation.  I don't want that.  Everything with everyone is weird lately, so I just feel like I'd rather not be bothered.  And I'm ok with that.  It's actually a choice I'm making, and I'm fine with it.  I'll spend the day with my husband, and my kids, and I'll know that I'm surrounded by people who actually want me around them, faults and all.  We'll probably get dinner and then go home and watch some tv and that'll be that.  It'll be low key, and peaceful, and free of any sense of forcing people into something they don't really want to do.  Now all I have to worry about is making sure the toddler makes it through dinner without melting down.