Not everyone becomes a parent and gets to celebrate Mother's Day or Father's Day, but everyone has a birthday roll around once each year. Kids can't wait for their birthday. It means parties and presents and a lot of attention focused on them. Birthdays grow less important over the years, but most people still secretly look forward to that day at least a little bit.
Birthdays are that one day each year when people pretend like we're important. We get phone calls and still normally get a present, or two. In many families, ours included, the birthday boy or girl gets to pick the meal for the day and maybe even choose the day's activities. Sometimes the celebrations become predictable; we pretty much always go to Marty's Pizza to celebrate Joseph's birthday and Emperor's Kitchen to celebrate Matthew's.
In 2006, Diane shocked me by saying she wanted the family to head to Minneapolis and go to Mall of America to celebrate her birthday. I was shocked because Diane is normally about the only person on Earth who hates shopping malls as much as I do. The boys were also very excited about seeing this massive temple of excess, so we planned the trip.
Diane's birthday fell on a Friday so I took the day off work and we planned a long weekend visit to Minneapolis. Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, but it became one since Diane's birthday falls just one day before mine. Well, technically, Diane's birth day was four years and one day before mine so for one day each year I can tease her that she robbed the cradle by marrying someone five years younger than her.
(Actually, Diane's Dad told me he was convinced that she had set standards for a guy that no human could ever meet. I'm not claiming that I finally met her standard of perfection, mind you; merely that she suddenly realized that her biological clock was ticking and she'd better hook onto the next guy who showed any interest and I was the lucky guy!)
But I digress...
There was really no way we could celebrate Diane's birthday with a trip to the Mall of America without it somehow also involving my birthday. So we planned our trip so that we would head up to Minneapolis on Diane's birthday, spend the day Saturday (my birthday) at the mall and return home Sunday.
What joy!!!! I would get to spend my birthday wandering around what was either the largest, or second largest shopping mall in the United States - depending upon whether you were judging based on number of stores or square footage. The day that was supposed to be all about Dad; doing the things Dad wanted to do and eating the food Dad wanted to eat had suddenly become an excursion into a mobbed shopping mall with the boys heading off on their own and Diane and I navigating over four million square feet of shopping opportunities. Our family became four of the forty million visitors the Mall of America claims to attract each year. I'm pretty sure at least five or six million of those forty million visitors happened to choose the same day to visit the mall as we had.
Please allow me to give you a bit if advice if you are thinking of a visit to the Mall of America...
DON'T DO IT - ESPECIALLY ON YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!!!
The entire complex has over five hundred stores and not a single one of those stores had the words Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops or Gander Mountain on the front. There was not a single Farm and Fleet or Menard's, either. The mall had virtually nothing that would make it worth spending your birthday in the place.
Diane and the boys found a couple of gifts for me, though. Diane found a nice St. Louis Blues tie at the Ralph Marlin store and the boys borrowed some money (never repaid, if I recall) to buy a St. Louis Blues mug for my birthday.
Diane and the boys enjoyed our visit to the mall immensely. They celebrated my birthday by selecting what we did, where we went, what we ate. Yep, it was pretty much a standard Dad's birthday celebration.
Now before you get the wrong idea; I did not enjoy the Mall of America. I hate shopping and I hate crowds. I'm not sure which I hate more, but with Mall of America, I didn't have to choose. I got both at the same time!
Our day at the Mall of America did provide one bright spot, though; it allowed me to completely ignore my birthday. I'm not one of those people who looks forward to my birthday and it has nothing to do with some false sense of pride in "staying young." I dread my birthday coming around each year. The last birthday I actually remember enjoying was my twelfth.
I was born on my Dad's twenty-seventh birthday. It was so cool to share Dad's birthday - especially since I was the only son of an only son. It was unique. It was one more thing that made our relationship special. My birthday celebrations died with Dad a couple of months before "our" birthday when I turned thirteen. Birthdays merely became a reminder each year of a life cut short; a relationship ended. I no longer mourn on my birthday, but I really prefer to ignore it and let it be like any other day.
Unfortunately, Diane and the boys still want to make a big deal out of my birthday, too. I tried for years to get them to just ignore it, but they can't bring themselves to do it. At least that year, I got to forget about it for the day. At least that year, no one was focused on "making my birthday memorable."
Unfortunately, it's probably the most memorable birthday I've had in decades - but for all the right reasons.
No comments:
Post a Comment