Today I celebrate 47 rotations around the sun. I don’t particularly feel like I am 47 years old. What I mean about that is that I don’t look like, sound like, or behave like the 47 year olds I grew up around. I don’t look 47 – and while that looks are subjective, I’ve been told that I don’t look my age. When I mention that I have a son, most folks are shocked to find out that my son is 25, soon to be 26. The assumption at that point is that he was a “teen pregnancy,” and I guess there is a certain level of compliment in there about looking too young to have a son that age? When I assure them that I was 21 years old when he was born, I can see them do the mental math and I can also see that my age still does not compute. It’s actually kinda hilarious to witness.
This is a great post that resonates with me deeply on why I really dislike my birthday:
I can list on one hand the number of “good” birthdays I’ve had in my life.
Highlights (good and bad):
- My 8th birthday was celebrated at Chuck E Cheese. My mother invited my entire class and our neighbors kids to celebrate. Everyone came for Chuck E Cheese, not me. They could care less about me. The neighbors she invited? The parents were some of my biggest bullies. Their kids weren’t much better. I got presents that were no where near what would ever pickout for myself, including a football, and basically hid in one of the playhouse tubes, the ball pit, or the mouse hole with the strobe light until the majority of folks left. I was overstimulated, tired, and hated that I had to pretend I loved it.
- My 10th and 11th birthdays were celebrated with my grandparents. We went to a restaurant of my choosing (I believe it was The Backwoods Inn), and they gave me thoughful gifts that I actually loved. Including my grandmother purchasing me my first Barbie doll (it was actually a Whitney doll, Barbie’s cousin, and featured my favorite Stephie face mold that inspired the Mackie face later on, but that’s a bit of weird trivia that most probably don’t care about).
- My 16th birthday was celebrated in Griffith Park at the Old Zoo – my friend Kat organized an amazing day that was the highlight of my really shitty teen years. I got to celebrate with my friends, made some new ones through Kat’s circle, and had a homemade cake singing “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” at the top of our lungs so loudly that a Production Assistant for the move “Junior” came down and kindly asked us to tone it down because they were filming. This led to Emma Thompson signing my birthday card!!! I was invited back later to be a background extra on that film – I’m just an orderly walking around in the background, but my 16 year old self used the $200 I earned that day to buy a tuxedo for my Senior Year (instead of renting one). I ended up going to several formals and Proms my Junior and Senior year using that tux, so it was well-worth the expense!
- My 23rd birthday was spent with my sister Mary and my ex-wife, camping in the Sequoia National Park. I came home to the horror of 9/11. I remember standing in my living room absolutely in shock at what I was witnessing. I remember the weather anchor getting angry because she thought that they were repeating footage of the tower’s fall, but the host saying, “No, that was the second tower.” The cry of anguish from both the weather and entertainment anchor haunts me.
- My 33rd birthday was spent smoothing over a professional relationship and performing at a Renaissance Faire I was not in the headspace for (with an actress I knew wasn’t right for the role of Elizabeth I), only to come home to find my house gutted of my wife’s and son’s things, to find out later that she had moved in with the man she had an earlier affair with (who had, in the past, threatened my life). It was a complicated situation, and I was devastated for a long time after that, thinking I was a failure. Reframing it with therapy helped me understand that we weren’t good to one another at all, and it was a toxic situation. She did me a favor ending it. Still, it was heartbreaking to come home to an empty house, confused animals (she left her dog of 12 years, and her cats – one of which was 15 years old), and no child.
I was invited by my friends Joss, Angela, and Ryan to celebrate our respective birthdays (Joss was on 9/11, and I believe Ryan’s was 9/12) at the Haven Gastropub in Orange. It was a sumptuous feast of a suckling pig with heavenly side dishes – first time I ever enjoyed Brussels Sprouts in my life. It was the day after I understood the extent of my pork allergy – I ended up with the world’s worst migraine and hives, crashed on Angela and Joss’s couch hopped up on Benedryl.
- My 43rd birthday was a post-pandemic celebration of both my CPE Residency Graduation and my birthday at Walt Disney World with my husband and my sisters Angela and Barbara, and my brother-in-law Nathan. It was a lesson in endurance – we did a full park day at the Magic Kingdom, and then had tickets for the Halloween celebration afterward. We were dead on our feet the next morning, and soaked in the adult’s pool at our resort, and promised to never do the two events on the same day ever again! Still, seeing my picture as Winifred Sanderson on the Disney Twitter Feed and in the Disney Files magazine was a hightlight!
Angela as Sarah, myself as Winifred, and Barbara as Mary Sanderson in 2023
As you might notice, the celebration part is fine, but it’s events that happen near the day of that make it kind of crappy, for lack of a better term. It’s why I eschew major celebrations on the day.
I do have a lovely birthday planned for myself for my 50th. I will hopefully have all the things I want, and maybe some folks will help me make a few things a reality (like a visit to Club 33 in Disneyland, and a dinner at the Victoria and Albert restaurant in Walt Disney World). Until then, I will continue my tradition of laying low because I feel like it. Today is a day to complete work, and prepare for a trip I don’t want to be on tomorrow!
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