cry if i want to

birthday things

Being born under the sign of Cancer is such a mixed blessing/curse but I am feeling grateful for it today.

My birthday is relatively close to the time when there is the most sun, being 18 days after the summer solstice. Yet Cancer is ruled by the moon, the sun’s complement. I don’t like the heat unless I’m swimming, and, unlike the strawberries, green onion, cilantro, borage, nasturtium, and cucumber plans I’m growing in containers by my front porch, I don’t like being in “full sun.”

In the past it was hard having a summer birthday. People travel. Growing up I could never celebrate my birthday in school like others did. There were the conciliatory suggestions of bringing in cupcakes to school on my half-birthday, January 9th, or around the last day of school, neither of which felt right. I especially hate how close my birthday is to the 4th of July. It’s like, in the national consciousness, my birthday is contained in a sort of national hangover moment, the grudging back-to-work after the long weekend. And I am embarrassed to share a birth sign with the United States.

This year I avoided all of that by traveling abroad, to Paris, in the week leading up to my birthday. France is also a country which shares my natal sign. Actually, I was supposed to be born on July 14th, Bastille Day, which is funny for a child who from a young age became obsessed with all things French (and still is). But I was early. A fact which heartens me. I really wanted to come into the world.

I was born in New York. The day before I was born, my parents went to the Film Forum to see the movie I Shot Andy Warhol. Then they ate at the Cornelia Street Cafe. I appreciate knowing these details. My mom had a natural birth at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Upper Manhattan. She had taken a pregnancy class where she learned a technique of self-hypnosis for birth called the Bradley Method. In that class she met two other women who remain her close friends to this day. I am inspired by this.

As an oldest child I don’t like to share. A very young part of me still mourns the moment when my sister was born and I had to share my parents’ affection.

I share my birthday with the huge event that is summer, high summer. The celebration of this time precedes me and has nothing to do with me. This time in the cycle of the year is already miraculous. In my past I have felt like a celebration of my birth was somehow always-already overshadowed by the season. But I am not interested in this framing of competition anymore. It feels silly.

This is my twenty-ninth birthday and I feel content… I got to go swimming, and then go refill my car’s gas tank at the Cumberland Farms in my still wet bathing suit, towel wrapped loosely around my torso, but also wearing the beautiful pearl necklace that my partner’s mom gave me for Christmas a few years ago. In this way I felt like a sort of femme beach-town diva, half-expecting paparazzi!