This is the first birthday that I remember. Which is kind of amazing, since I have many, many memories of life before I turned four. My sister jokes that I remember the womb. You would think that a birthday, say my second or third, would stand out.
My mother asked me what kind of cupcakes I wanted and I said, “blue.” So, blue cupcakes I got. I can not find the pictures, but I know they exist, of my mother and me in the kitchen frosting those cupcakes. I am in my nightgown, sitting on the counter, licking 1963-Buick-aquamarine-blue frosting off of a spoon.
The other thing I remember, is that at the end of the party, I was trying very hard to say, “Good bye, thank you for coming,” to all of my adult guests, when really all I wanted to do was play, uninterrupted, with my new birthday treasures.
And, it was the first birthday where I had to share the spotlight with a sibling. My sister, Tricia, four months old. Scrawniest baby you ever saw. All she could do was lie there, ugly and puce. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
Happy birthday to me!
Since I can't find the cupcake picture, you will have to settle for the cheesecake picture, taken around the same time. This is my great-grandmother, my cousins, my sister, and me. I am the one in the bikini.
When my friend Toni was born prematurely, her sister, who was 5 described her as a 'boiled monkey'.
ReplyDeleteYou were cute, though, especially with that 'heh heh heh' expression on your face.
I must interject. I say you remember the birth canal not the womb, hinting at the fact you can somehow commit to memory the traumatic or dramatic aspects of life while diregarding the mundane. And... Puce, really!
ReplyDeleteRebecca, That look is the same look her son Jonah gets when he is plotting.
Happy BirthMonth my dear sister. I love you.
Puce, now that's a word you don't hear every day. I actually used it in Scrabble last week, believe it or not. I spent the summer in Japan in 1973, two months before I turned 17.
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday!!!
That's a great picture! No posing, no cheesy smiles, just a la naturaal. :)
ReplyDeleteWith the way you have your feet, you are either bursting to go to wee or within seconds of hareing off.
ReplyDeleteAnd the face certainly has the cast of a person with the future ability of shouting 'Objection' with conviction and the current of speaking 'I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove a thing'.
Happy Birthday.
Rebecca, my sister was not premature, but she was only 4 pounds. She looked like a turtle without a shell. She was Tricia-Turtle for years.
ReplyDeleteNow, Tricia, I think any of my readers could tell you that I retain quite a bit of the mundane.