Kids!

Going to a birthday party tomorrow night.  A friend’s birthday party.  A really lovely friend.  We I have so many of them. Special friends, that is.  For which we have always been grateful and for which I am all that more grateful in recent times.

It will be a lovely birthday celebration; I know this because of who the birthday person is and the birthday person’s family.  A unique and particularly close family so I am expecting the fellow guests to also be unique and particularly interesting individuals of like minds and will be there because of their affection for the lovely birthday person. 

Mind you, the venue is rather appealing, being Langham’s which is the old Sheraton Hotel building in the city.  When I had my little tourist business Langham’s was one of my two favourite hotels to deal with and my clients who stayed there always scored it well in terms of customer satisfaction.  Plus, the head doorman at Langham’s was the second best doorman in New Zealand.  SkyCity Grand has the best.  You have to be in the business to understand what I am talking about and why I would have my own rating of doormen.

July is a busy month for birthdays.  Always has been, all my life our family celebrated many birthdays in July.

I have spent the last few weeks dreading this month of July birthdays.  I shouldn’t do because some of the people I love most have a birthday this month.  Big Son Danny has his at the end of the month.  Little Sister Tina has hers next week.  It’s Tony’s great-nephew, Toby’s, today.  And little Anthony was meant to be born next week but he clearly decided there were too many July birthdays so he planned to come one month early and therefore not be relegated to just another individual having a July birthday in our family.  He gets his dibs in first for birthday celebrations from now on.

July will always be a difficult month for me, no matter how many years pass by between now and my own demise.  Because the month of July is/was the month of celebrating Tony’s birthday and whilst he always played down the idea of our celebrating his day, I always made a fuss of him on the 21^st; particularly in the last five years when each birthday celebrated meant so much more to me, to us.

When we first became a team of two, he found bemusement in my insisting we would celebrate his birthday on the actual day, the 21^st, and make it significant in some way.  Seems in his previous life birthdays were acknowledged but very often celebrations or gifts were give a month in advance or a month or two later.  I found that weird.  It’s not your birthday on any other day but your ‘birth’ day.  When I reflect back we had some superb birthday celebrations on the 21^st.  And a couple or three special parties too.  And whilst he pretended to brush off all the attention we all knew he really loved it. 

I am very glad I did make a fuss of him on special occasions.  I used to do so on Valentine’s Day and even Father’s Day – particularly in the years when one of his sons was away from Auckland and unable to acknowledge it and the other just never did.  It was important to me to let Tony know how proud I was of what a good father he had been to his boys.  That was something I was very aware that my own two boys never had; therefore I had a greater appreciation and understanding of how fortunate his two had been to have had a father that deeply loved and cared for them.  Hence my ensuring that if they could not acknowledge Tony on Father’s Day, I would.

The weeks are passing and the 21^st is getting closer.  I have contemplated various ways of skipping the day and somehow moving from the 20^th to the 22^nd but no one has yet invented a time machine to do that for me; and I did flippantly tell someone that I was thinking about spending a day in bed with a slow supply of sleeping tablets throughout the day to make me sleep through the 24 hour period as that would be less harmful than an alcoholic alternative.

I do have to remind myself though, that I am not the only one who will find they shall have a heavy heart on the 21^st.  I know there will be others hurting so cannot be too self-indulgent, therefore am working on some sensible ways of making the day a happy one rather than a mournful one.  And will Skype some others, I hope.

Before the 21^st arrives I have the difficulty that the 7^th of July looms and that is almost worse.  It is my birthday and in Tony’s pre-tumour days he would always make the day very special for me.  Actually, even post-tumour days he would make the day special in some way.  I won’t have him here this year – or any other years.  It will be tough, very tough.  The penalty of deep love is the frequent reminder of what is lost and it is impossible to not have a major case of severe melancholy when birthdays or anniversaries loom.  They should become less severe as the years pass, I think. 

So thank goodness for having kids!  Be they big kids now.  Some bigger than others.  I thank goodness for kids and having kids who care. 

Thank you Danny, and Glenn, and Yoli, and Pete, and Natasha;  for they have been sensitive enough to realise the 2013 date of July 7 will be the most difficult I will ever encounter.  In the long known knowledge that I loathe surprises, of any kind, they have informed me of their plans to make this coming Sunday the second best day I could wish for.  If I cannot have Tony with me they have organised the rest of the fam damily to be here.  And we have a blessing for the day - with Tony missing we have the perfect replacement, little Anthony.  And no doubt little Anthony will steal the day for attention, just like big Anthony would have under normal circumstances.  So it shouldn’t feel too different to the past 22 years of my birthdays.

Gosh I am glad we had kids.