dreaming@echonyc.com

in no particular order...

one year when i was in elementary school, my parents gave me two blue parakeets for my birthday. they must have given them to me a day early or so. i got up early on valentine's day to finish stuffing envelopes for the all-important valentine swap at school. i went into the den to do my work and to visit the birds, only to find two stiff, dead parakeets on the floor of their cage.

special bonus parakeet moment: we had another parakeet for a very short while. it escaped from its cage one evening and made for the sliding glass door like a hellfire missile, colliding with an audible *bonk*. the bird died shortly thereafter.

special bonus small animal head trauma moment: seems like i also had a hamster right around that time. dana charpentier dropped it on its head on her doorstep. r.i.p., nibbles.

when i was a senior in high school, dad got a job in cleveland. he briefly lived in an apartment there while mom stayed behind in atlanta to see to the details of moving. i went to cleveland, too, so i could start school at the beginning of the second semester.

at the time, dad was traveling a lot. he was going to be in japan for my birthday. i was rather pleased to spend a few days on my own being all adult and self-sufficient, and determined to do only what i felt like (in addition to going to school, which it would not have occurred to me to skip). so on the day before my birthday, i took a long nap...so long that i didn't wake up until the next morning...with my contact lens glued to the insides of my eyelids.

i couldn't keep my eyes open for longer than a minute without intense pain. i somehow managed to find an eye doctor in an unfamiliar town, drive there in dad's rented lincoln town car while half-blind and panicking, and get my eyes unglued. i do not know how i managed to avoid a serious traffic accident, but later that day, after i drove to school, i did manage to get a parking ticket. i'm pretty good at things like that.

in college, i felt rather aggrieved one year because none of my friends had given me a card or a gift — i'd gotten nothing more than a grunted "happy birthday" at breakfast. my feelings were rather hurt, and i vented them to nancy, my roommate. and, oh, what an ass i felt like later, when i walked into the surprise party she'd arranged for me.

my friend peter feld used to take me out every year on my birthday. we'd have dinner and he'd tell me the clown joke. i miss peter. strangely, we only lost touch once we both lived in the same city.

it was my birthday the weekend i met owen, and we had a truly glorious time together. (i was young enough to be impressed that he'd had his apartment cleaned for my visit. now i would be contemptuously amused that he'd had to hire someone to do it for him.) i wrote him a note before i left, thanking him for "the best weekend in recent memory." only later would he tell me how offended he was that it was just the best "in recent memory."

in an abrupt swivel away from owen's prima donna psychodrama, let us consider for a moment the aeron chair that was a birthday gift from paul one year. he took me to have dim sum with some friends he'd gathered at golden unicorn, then walked me past modernica in soho, where my chair occupied the front window. he loves me and my lower back.

and he knows me, that's for sure. one year for my birthday paul got me a cake from cupcake cafe. "extra flowers," he told them, "and she likes orange." there was, i estimate, about a pound of orange buttercream crowning that cake, and i loved every bite.

speaking of cake, one year — i must have been about 11 — my mom and i baked a layer cake. every layer was a different color, and every layer of frosting was a different color. this was quite a vivid departure from the red velvet cake she usually baked me. (one year we had fancy petits fours from a real live bakery.)

when i was in high school and my brother paul was in college, he invited me to go out on my birthday. sure, fine. we went out for dinner at a hangout near the georgia tech campus, then he surprised me by pulling out tickets for that night's yes concert. no owner of a lonely heart, i!

oh, concerts. would you believe that duran duran was in town the night of my thirteenth birthday? dad took my friend sophie and me. i could have died happily that night except that sophie kept insisting nick rhodes had looked right at her. i plotted her demise for years after that.

when i was a tiny girl my aunts debbie and norma made me a real white tulle ballerina tutu for my birthday. enough said.