31 Flavors

Being here in Ukraine, where we are 7 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, I had the somewhat unusual experience of enjoying 31 hours of my 31^st birthday (or, as I prefer to describe it, 31 hours of my twenty-eleventh birthday).  Even weeks later, I found myself still celebrating – kinda.

As far as birthdays go, it wasn’t so bad.  Still a far cry from the days of cupcakes at school for The Rest of the Class, but then again, does anyone even mark the occasion much back home? 

I remember, in addition to the obligatory and awesome cupcakes-in-class tradition (didn’t they ban that practice sometime recently?  The whole world’s gone mad), how my Mom and Dad used to make such a big deal about my birthday.  I suppose that was because they had waited so long for me (15 years), believing they couldn’t ever have kids – so, in a way, my birthdays were just as much a celebration for them as they were for me (until, I wager, my teens, at which point my birthdays, at least to my Parents, were probably more of a Countdown-to-Eighteen-and-Possibly-Emancipation Celebration for them than anything).

Every year, for our little family birthday party, my Aunts and Uncles would come and we’d have a cake (sometimes homemade, but very often an ice cream cake from Baskin & Robbins, or even a Carvel ice cream cake.  Yes, I’m talking about Fudgie the Whale).  My Godfather would always bring me a red rose for each year, up until my Sweet Sixteen (for which my Godparents also gave me, in addition to a bottle of Estee Lauder Pleasures I had been dying for, a stunning pair of emerald-cut blue topaz earrings (my birthstone), one of which I lost a few years ago (the remaining earring I had set in a ring with a diamond as a retirement gift for Mom in 2007, courtesy of John Bosco Jewelers (AWESOME family-owned business, great people!) in Mobile, AL; see it here:

The origins of that diamond… well, that’s another [long] story entirely.).  I didn’t confess the loss of those earrings to my Godparents until sometime last year; I knew they had spent so much on them.  Then, for my second-29^th birthday last year , my Parents visited Florida for Christmas/my birthday with a gift delivered from my Godparents (who live near them in Annapolis) – a new pair of princess-cut blue topaz earrings:

My ears couldn’t believe my eyes!!  What a wonderful birthday surprise; seriously, my Godparents are the most kind and loving people I have ever met... I am so touched that they remembered and are as sentimental as I am).  :)

Anyway, I also remember wearing a corsage on my birthday, every year.  Mom would run out and get it the night before from the florist in Canarsie (Forever Yours Florist on Rockaway Pkwy and Remsen Ave?  No, wait, I think it was somewhere on Avenue L), and the morning of my birthday, before I went to school, I put on this corsage that announced to the world that TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY, and got tons of attention all day and, for awhile, I absolutely loved it (it was the only way to get any birthday notoriety, what with my birthday being right before Christmas – that Jesus guy gets all the attention).  The corsage always had some metaphorical symbol of the year on it – if not simply a plastic number reflecting my actual age.  For instance, my Sweet Sixteen corsage had, in addition to a plastic "16," fake sugar cubes on it (get it?  SWEET 16?  Geez, I crack myself up) – which were made, if I recall, out of Styrofoam.  In hindsight, it was cute and an adorable and loving gesture on the part of my Parents, and I secretly loved it.  At the time though, mostly I was just MORTIFIED (hello – this is HIGH SCHOOL...?!  Did Brenda and Dylan ever wear birthday corsages?  No… at least one of them was too busy wearing anti-wrinkle cream).  I think that was the last year I wore – or agreed to wear – a birthday corsage; maybe it's just that  nobody could imagine another person wearing a birthday corsage into adulthood.

Nowadays, at this advanced age, it’s more customary to let the day go by unobserved (a challenge for an observer), but the folks I’ve come to know here made sure my away-from-home birthday was just as good as any I’d have had back in the States.

My work partner, Vlad, was out of town until late that night, so I had the day to do some actual work-work, have some clothes tailored (for cheap!), and then come home and make myself micro-cheeseburgers (not microwaved, just micro – about half the size of normal “sliders” like you’d get at Chili’s… and that’s only because that’s how big the rolls were.  American cheese, ground beef, ketchup, salt and pepper… but for the lack of pickles, they were awesome!!).  See for yourself:

Our Interpreter, Lilia, arrived early for work that morning with a gift bag including a bottle of bubble bath, a pair of angora socks (which I’d been wanting for some time), and the CUTEST stuffed toy – a cat, named Vasa (short for Vasiliiy), with a FUNCTIONAL BELLY BUTTON (lint-free).  My immediate reaction?  To put my finger directly into said belly button.  (Apparently, this is a common reaction.)  Freakin’ adorable. 

Our landlady, Galina, who’d been at our house with the repair man for the hot water heater for the umpteenth time (actual figure), had asked the day before my birthday [after I’d told her that the gifts of heat and hot water were the best pre-birthday gifts of all] what my Zodiac sign was (this, for the record, required a Phone-a-Friend to my Interpreter).  I told her I’m a Capricorn, and then we moved on to other topics (namely, smiling at each other, because she speaks no English, and I speak barely more Russian than Vasa the Stuffed Cat, above).  The next day, she and Lilia were phoning each other all morning, arranging to meet (unbeknownst to me), and when Lilia and I emerged from a meeting around noon, there was Galina, with a bouquet of flowers, and a little gift bag.  Inside the bag was this little velvet, bell-shaped gift box, with this tiny golden Capricorn charm!  What a sweet surprise!!

Then, several weeks later (this week, in fact), when we had a farewell dinner for some of the people we were working with who were departing the next day, Vlad kindly and loudly made it a point to note that my birthday had just passed.  Also having recently passed was a large amount of alcohol, right past the lips of one of these colleagues of ours… which meant not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR rounds of “Happy Birthday,” sung by the whole group, with our lubricated and jovial colleague as the leader (if you're reading this, Roman, thank you!).  It was hilarious – and the gift of his “meat and red balls” (some kind of lamb thing and some peeled tomatoes) was just… well… let’s just say I was speechless (and I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard as we all did that night!!).

On top of the meat you might notice two packaged pink pills -- we were told they're some kind of digestive pill (always a good sign in a restaurant when Pepto is served literally on a side dish along with the appetizers).  Most of us, though, thought for sure it was a generic version of Viagra... hence their appearance on this suggestive belated-birthday dinner "gift," for which I was abundantly grateful and only moderately mortified.

I suppose it’s the gift that keeps on giving.