Birthdays: A Celebration for Mom?
My daughter’s 6th birthday is on Tuesday April 30th. She is so excited and filled with expectation, anticipation, and aspiration. She is going to be a “big girl” now. (Funny how that exact same thing happened when she turned 5 almost a year ago.) While she is experiencing pure jubilation about her pending big day, I am feeling stressed, pressured, and confused as to what to get her and how to celebrate another year of her life. In order to gain clarity and perspective I stopped for a minute to think. What does a birthday actually celebrate anyway? The person? The persons life? The persons birth? A year in the life of…
As I reflected on this question I decided to focus on the word BIRTHDAY. When considering it from this perspective, I decided that a birthday must celebrate the DAY of a person’s BIRTH. This “revelation” led me on a journey into the past, specifically April 30th 2007 at 4:00pm. I remembered how mentally and physically exhausted I was after being pregnant for 12 days beyond my “due date”. I remembered that she was facing the wrong way in the birth canal and how that lead to intense back labor that slowed down the dilation progress. I remembered how hard I worked to bring her into this world. So far, my trip down memory lane had led me to the conclusion that my daughters birthday was all about me, really. Funny how that worked out in my mind. Isn’t it? Okay, well maybe my daughter had a little to do with it. After all, birthing is really a beautiful dance between baby (with the help of Mother Nature) and mommy (with the help of Mother Nature and a bit of grit).
So I have decided that my daughter’s birthday is going to be a celebration of her day of birth and how special that day is for our family and how blessed we are because she joined us on that beautiful day.
What about her party, you ask? Well I have not figured the details out yet, but I have scheduled a day at the spa for myself! Because I sure did work hard on her birthday and I deserve a party. Feel free to join me!