On turning 42

When I still was in school my birthday always happened during summer break. Always. By the time school started again it was like a distant memory. Always a bit odd to celebrate it weeks later.

Now I’m a bit more grown-up and living in a different part of Germany where my birthday always happens in the last week before summer break. This year on a Monday. Which somehow feels wrong. At least my morning student moved her lesson (for her own reasons) but in the afternoon I almost had to work from 2 to 8. (I know it’s only 6.45 now, another student had to cancel.)

My new bad habits of not phoning friends, not sending birthday cards, not commenting on blogs, and working all day long means that I haven’t received that many birthday wishes so far. (My father sent an e-mail and I talked to my sister on the phone. Oh, and a cousin of mine sang “Zum Geburtstag viel Glück” on my answering machine. I think I might be ungrateful.)

On the other hand I was woken by my dear son at 7 with the words “Happy birthday Mama!”. I’m still trying to teach him that the “Don’t wake me before 7, please!”-rule does not mean he has to wake me precisely at seven but it was nice nonetheless.

I’m told that he didn’t want to draw me a picture but then he had the idea of giving me a meditation session. We fitted that in somewhere around 12 today, we met in his room with our cushions, and he had organized a candle, and some incense, and had drawn all the curtains. We sat there, the three of us, for a moment of much needed peace.

It had been my husband’s idea to leave our son home from kindergarten today. The two of them went out on their bikes to cut flowers for me. So sweet.

We had cake for breakfast, and went out for Asian food for lunch. I still haven’t had any champagne yet which is a shame but I’ll get to it later, I promise. It’s already cooling in the fridge.

I just looked at the post I wrote last year for my birthday. I wrote that I had been looking longingly at spinning wheels on the internet. Well, guess what I did today? I know, I already have a spinning wheel but I’d like to have a travel wheel. And since I have received generous gifts of money from both my husband and mother-in-law I’m almost halfway there. Of course, being me I’m already planning to order one tomorrow, and then save the money for it later. (The reasoning behind it goes like this: If I take my birthday money, and the money I’ll earn by teaching that one student all through summer break, and the money I put away for the piano, I’ll have enough. And the wheel will be here in time for the next spinning meeting, and I don’t have to pack my wheel into plastic bags again (the other spinners were already laughing at me last time), nor will I have to sew a bag for a wheel that I won’t be lugging around much longer.) Very reasonable, isn’t it?

Apart from those nice little printed pieces of paper in envelopes I also got a heap of books because this time when my parents asked me about what I wanted for my birthday, not only did I say, “You know, I have an Amazon wishlist,” I also added, “Maybe my sister will help you with ordering something.” Because while my father has been having a computer since the late 70s he is still on dial-up and using a browser that doesn’t do java or flash or anything. So my dear sister helped out and I got a lovely package filled with books. I already started reading “How to be Idle” nodding my head at every other paragraph, and reading parts of it aloud to my husband.

When I woke up this morning I planned to write about how crappy the last year has been, how bad I feel about my weight gain (I have an ipod application that tells me I have gained 5.4 kilos in the past year.), and how I’m still tired, and meh, and not making any music or writing stories and such. But now that the day has gone a bit further along I feel much better.

So now (I have taught my last student for today in the meantime, these blog posts sometimes stretch out a bit.) I will go to the kitchen, to my dear family, open that champagne bottle and celebrate a bit. For about half an hour until it’s time for my son to go to bed. And then some more after he has fallen asleep.