Misty birthday-colored memories

Tomorrow's my birthday. I had a couple of work pals surprise me and take me out for a birthday lunch, and that was nice. It got me thinking about some of the best birthday memories I have:

• One, of course, was being born, but I'm a little hazy on that. I know there was a bright light and lots of noise, and I got smacked around a little bit, but it ended well. I got a pink blanket out of it.
• There were plenty of parties with annoying kids who pinched me, busted the pinata before I got a turn, and made fun of my lop-sided, microwaved chocolate cakes. That wasn't so great.
• I got a Sweet 16 party, and my parents invited the boy I'd had a huge crush on for three years -- to his credit, he was nice enough to attend, but I'm sure inside he was cringing.
• When we lived in Washington, our circle of friends threw some great and creative parties for birthdays. One involved a hair-ball puppet; another centered around a handwritten story featuring Star Trek characters and an Organic Life Form (OLF). Those were the salad days.

Saw my favorite sister yesterday. She and her husband were on their way back to Colorado. They stopped in to say hello and wish me a happy birthday. "The older you get, the less of a big deal it is," she said, handing me a card my parents had asked her to deliver. (They live in town, and refuse to mail anything to me -- why waste a perfectly good stamp? If my sis hadn't brought the card over, I'd have had to pick it up myself.)

I agree with her on some level. I don't want expensive gifts. I don't even want cards, but I get a secret pleasure out of ecards, emails, and phone calls. I like it when people do stuff like that. It makes me feel a little special. It's nice.

One of the best gifts I ever got came out of the blue a couple of years ago. One of my co-workers had recently retired. She called me on her cell phone from the beach and let me listen to the breaking waves, knowing how much I loved the ocean. I will never forget that. One of these days, maybe I'll spend my birthday at a real ocean. Or, if global warming really kicks in, my little Oklahoma house might be situated on beachfront property.

Awesome!