happy birthday, jeff

I turned 32 yesterday. It was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. I worked an honest ten-hour day at a job that challenges me and caters to my strengths for the first time in my life. I was too busy to answer the surprisingly high number of calls I received. As cheesy as all that sounds, it made it a uniquely great birthday.

Julia met me when I got off work, and after picking up a new humidifier we aborted plans to use a gift-certificate to a nice restaurant in Brooklyn Heights and instead ducked out of the brutal cold and into a horrifically tacky tourist-trap Mexican restaurant near my sister’s apartment. There was a doorman, a hostess, several waitresses, a bartender, a DJ and about nine patrons (including the three of us).

When the waitress brought out my birthday desert (a traditional Mexican dish called “chocolate explosion”), the DJ stopped the record, got on the mic and asked everybody to sing along. Written on the plate in chocolate sauce was the phrase “Happy Birthday Jeff.”

Misinterpreting our genuine amusement, several apologies by assorted members of the staff followed, highlighted by the DJ leaving the booth, coming over and saying, “I’m sorry, Jeff, I thought your name was Justin.” At one point the waitress accused my sister of telling her my name was Jeff, to which my sister responded, “I’m his sister, I know what his name is.” I would pay a lot of money for a video of the entire experience – high comedy indeed.

Growing up, early January is a pretty crappy time to have a birthday – everyone is mid holiday-fatigue and no one that bought you a present for Hannukah or Christmas wants to spring for anything again so soon. Of course the older you get, the less of a deal you want to make out of your birthday, so I’m fine with January now.

For a long time I’ve been much more into assessing the current state of my life than what I actually do for my birthday. For this reason, many of my birthdays have really sucked.

When I turned 25, I had just scored the best gig of my life and was performing four nights a week. I was in my last semester of music school and felt like I was well on my way to a career as a professional musician. I don’t remember what I did for that birthday, but I know I felt good about turning 25.

When I turned 26 I was in Iowa, working as a secretary in a small office with three women, one of whom was harassing me. Not a good birthday.

I was happy to turn 30 as a graduate student and feeling like I had redirected my life, but by 31 that feeling had subsided.

Approaching parenthood you start to view holidays and events as a series of “lasts” – your last Christmas without a kid, your last New Years, last Arbor Day. But knowing that I will turn 33 as a father is pretty incredible. Amongst many other things, it is a guarantee that future birthdays will never suck again. At least not as much as they once did.