It's January 7, and yes, it is my birthday, and I'm not celebrating. It's the big one, as far as I'm concerned, and from now on I'll count birthdays only every 5 or 10 years - it's been all downhill for a while now.
Birthdays have not been happy ones for me in a long time. Today, after reading somebody's blog about it also being her birthday and the anniversary of her father's death I realized why. My father died a couple of months before my birthday and before Xmas, a time that he cherished. For the first time since I left home, that year, understandably, my mother didn't call me to wish me a happy birthday. No birthday cards, no calls, no gifts......just silence. I remember wondering how could she forget, since my twin brother lived with her and would surely serve as a reminder. But I guess the death of my father was still fresh in her mind and she simply forgot to call me and wish me a happy birthday. I never knew how that had affected me until today, when I read that other post and realized that ever since his death I no longer cherished the holidays and my birthday as I used to. It used to be a magical time, the birth of Christ, the holiday decorations and specialty foods, the Christmas songs my father would listen to all day long while my mother and the maid would prepare the feast. He would sit in the terrace sipping our version of eggnog and singing along, happy memories. My birthday would be a day after Three Kings day, the date when we give gifts to the children in celebration of the day when the three wise men visited Christ and brought him gifts. It still a magical time for me, but without my father around it has lost some of it's magic. Happy birthday to my brother Amaury and myself, wishing for happier times with my family.
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