Happy Birthday, Afrika!

It's almost time for my birthday! April 18th. Sometimes I'm tempted to feel sad as my birthday approaches because of all the tragic things that have happened around this time of year.

April 15, 1912 - The Titanic Sank
April 4, 1968 - MLK Assassinated
April 19, 1993 - The Waco Siege
April 19, 1995 - The Oklahoma City Bombing
April 7, 1994 - The Rwandan Genocide Began
April 20, 1999 - Columbine Massacre
April 16, 2007 - Virginia Tech Mass Shooting
April 15, 2013 - The Boston Marathon Bombing

There's that, plus the fact that for several years, from the time I was 12 until I was 16, my birthday wasn't celebrated because my family belonged to a religious organization that believed it was vain to celebrate birthdays. I didn't have what other kids had. No bat-mitzvah, no rite of passage, no quinceanera. Even when there was a doctrinal shift, and birthdays weren't as frowned upon, my birthday sometimes fell during the Days of Unleavened Bread where we had to remove all leavening agents from our homes. That made having a birthday cake a challenge.

Before all of that happened, though, one of my favorite memories was my 9th birthday party. It was a slumber party where all my favorite friends and cousins came over to spend the night. My mom made me a Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man birthday cake, and a ton of homemade french fries - one of my favorite things to this day.  We had a grab bag for the guests, we listened to scary stories from Alfred Hitchcock and stories my dad told that caused so much delightful terror.  Nothing like a bunch of 9-year-old girls screaming and laughing.  I remember the Strawberry Shortcake dolls I got and the Vectrex game system my sister bought me (I still have that Vectrex, it still works, and I can still rock it!).

Why any religious group, despite all the Biblical and experiential evidence to the contrary, would choose to believe that God would be against us celebrating the day He blessed us with life in this world - the day we began our journey here - is beyond me. So with Serena and Cairo, we go out of our way to make every birthday special, and when Dishon turned 40, I threw him a massive surprise party beyond what I even thought I was capable of. Our presence in the world matters, and is worth all the confetti canons, songs, balloons, fireworks, joy and laughter we can imagine.

That's how I feel about my birthday. I have decided to take my birthday off from work each year if it falls on a week day. No matter what day of the week it falls on, though, I try my best to fill it with all the things I want to do. What I want to eat, drink, watch, where I want to go, or not go . . . it's my special day. In fact, all throughout the year, I yell out 4:18 when I see that time on the clock, because it reminds me that my presence in this world changed things for the better and it matters. I caught a Pokemon the other day with a CP of 418 (I think it's Bulbasaur), and I won't transfer it, power it up, or evolve it. I like that number. 

When I'm revising my novel, I want to think about what birthdays mean to the characters. Do they celebrate? Not celebrate? Look forward to it? Dread it? No matter how people perceive their birthdays, there is a passage of time that we can't avoid. We only live this earthly life once, and it's a precious gift. We should party like it's worth something big. Our unique journey around the sun. April18th, I hope you're ready for me, because I'm definitely ready for you 🎉🎁🎈🎆😉🎉.