Birthdays: magic days of unrepeatable events…In my imagination they look polished and warm.
I consider birthdays a bouquet of heartfelt memories. There are no two of them alike.
We expect the most out of our birthdays; we expect perfection, love, and a new experience—a new adventure.
As a child, my birthday was one of the most beautiful days of the year because it was also the last day of school and the first day of freedom. Freedom to eat cherries from the old cherry tree in front of our house, in which I used to climb wearing my uniform and staining it with cherry juice, to my mother’s horror.
Freedom to embrace a long never-ending summer holiday in the middle of flowers and fruit trees. Freedom to cycle wherever and whenever I wanted. Freedom to sit quietly in the flower garden and to observe the violet twilight taking over the world. To smell the tuberoses. Another cherish memory is the summer nights spent in the garden, and looking at the flowers and shrubs in the light of the Japanese moon or the moon with a halo which gives the everything around a shadowy mystery glint.
I have understood this feeling better after discovering “Eu nu strivesc corola de minuni a lumii” by Lucian Blaga.
As an adult, I frequently had to work on my birthday, but I made it a point to do something that had personal significance to me. More often than not, that meant writing something new. I am trying to find that fresh, happy feeling that I am in the middle of a story whose paths I am able to create. I always live in the stories I write.
I am very presumptuous to say that it is the same as living in a Van Gogh painting. I do wish that my strokes of words were as powerful as those in his paintings.
Why do we put so much pressure on our birthdays to be perfect?
Perhaps it’s because we want stability and peace of mind in our lives and hope that our problems would disappear, if only for a day.
What about you?
How do you spend your birthday?
Art – Quint Buchholz
