This blog post is for everyone celebrating a birthday … any time, any day, any year. This blog post … is for you … and for everyone who has celebrated a birthday with you.
I started thinking about this post a few months ago as my own birthday was approaching. Should I say something? About candles on a cake, about birthday wishes, about the number being so much less important than how you feel about the number? I wasn’t sure if a birthday blog post was in the cards. I thought, let me see if I can find a photo in my archives. No photo, no post, that would decide it.
Then I found the photo above. It may look like a photo of a birthday cake … which it is. As with any photo, though, there is more going on than what you can see (within the frame and beyond it). The water carafe with the slice of lemon, covered in condensation, slipped through my hands on that hot, summer day, and broke. The vintage glass with little red circles is also long gone. The tinted crystal champagne glasses, so fragile, the last two in a set of four, given to me by a dear friend, would see a few more parties, before, they too, would shatter. And we ate the cake, of course.
When I look at that photo — which wasn’t my birthday party and wasn’t your birthday party (unless you’re the person pictured behind the cake, that is) — it reminds me of the fleeting quality of every birthday and any birthday, of every day and any day.
So … this blog post is for you … for today, the yesterdays and the tomorrows.
a few words ... from Montréal 