Birth Day

I was supposed to be a boy.
And I’m not saying I have gender confusion. “I enjoy being a girl.”
I’m saying my mother carried and birthed me under the careful and watchful eye of her own mother: a registered midwife. She took every legitimate test to predict the gender of her fourth pregnancy. Her three oldest were all boys -all beautiful, wonderful, cute, squirrely, stinky, BOYS.

My mom relied on Old Wives’ Tales gender prediction tests, and every single one of them pointed in one direction: boy.
I was a boy, my mother was sure. She resigned herself to the idea that she was destined to raise up a small platoon of boys and waited for August 11th to roll around.
August 11th was her husband’s birthday AND the baby’s due date.
It came and went, and my mother wasn’t the happiest pregnant woman in the world.
“Well, maybe the baby will come on the 17th,” my grandmother told my mother. The 17th was my oldest brother’s birthday.
Again, they were wrong. Everyone was wrong about everything about me all along, you know.
I wasn’t born on the 11th because I was either too considerate to ruin my dad’s day… or I wasn’t done saying “see you soon” to every single soul I knew in heaven.
I think it was the second one, and I think my husband would agree with his whole patient “when are we going to leave this party, Alicia?” heart.
I wasn’t born on the 17th because… well, I wanted my birthday first, obviously. The day after I was born, my brother turned 5 and so began a lifetime of me stealing his birthday thunder. He never got his own party after I plopped into the picture.
Except for the day I turned 16 and he asked my permission to announce his engagement to our family. Family? Psh. I wasn’t worried about FAMILY on my 16th birthday… I just wanted to go to school where all of my friends were waiting. Go ahead, man. Have a heyday. Announce away. Congrats, by the way.

I was born around 4:30 in the afternoon on a Friday. I wanted the weekend, what can I say?
And I picked the perfect time to come to earth. I have an obsession with the end of summer.
It’s the sunset of summer -it’s sunflowers, it’s everything golden, it’s school and long days and warmth. I get giddy when I see the first sunflowers pop up on the roadsides.
I even went so far as to get married on September 4th and everything was sunflowers, sunflowers, sunflowers.

Sunflowers!

Boy, was my mom shocked. The son she planned on naming James Delbert Hansen was…
NOT a son at all. And she wouldn’t make a very good James.
Brittany? Brittany! Should would make a great Brittany! And so my aunt phoned all the family.
“The baby is here! It’s a girl! She weighs blahblah and is blahblah long and her name… is Brittany.”
So many calls were made, so much background business was going on… and there I was, brand new, cradled in the arms of my mother.
She had me at home, because my mother is a supreme CHAMPION, and while the world around her swirled with commotion… she just looked at me.
A girl.
Brittany.
Brittany.
Brittany?
It just didn’t sit right… so she renamed me something a little like Alicia and THEN she renamed me -for one final time -Alicia, after my great-grandmother Alice.

And the phone calls went ’round again.
“The baby’s name has changed. It’s Alicia.”
“The baby’s name has changed. It’s Alicia.”
“The baby’s name has changed. It’s Alicia.”
We have a lot of family…

So the baby’s name changed, and my family’s life changed. I was a swirl of pink in a world of blue, and The Brothers became my temporary enemies and life long supporters.

Every little girl should have three older brothers in her corner.

Every year for my birthday, my mom would take me on her lap and tell me my birth story. As I got older, I pretended I was annoyed but I loved every second of it.
You know me and stories…

I can’t believe that day was 27 years ago. I can’t BELIEVE my brother just turned 32. I’m sure my mother is looking around her wondering what in the devil is going on… but the grand kids are always around to remind her that her own children growing up and leaving is a good and great thing.

Because my house was cleaned up on the 15th, I spent my birthday doing whatever made me happy. I woke up early, got ready for the day, was scared out of my mind by my daughter sneaking up behind me ridiculously early in the morning and saying, “Happy Birthday, Mom!”
I may have had my back to her.
And JUST have gotten out of the shower… you know…
I jumped outta my skin.
And then I got dressed and took her shopping with me. She talked me into buying Oreos, and we had a great time together buying the gear for a fat chocolate cake and fish tacos. I even pulled some cash out of the food budget to spend at the School Book Fair that night. I’ve a sort of obsession with Book Fairs since I learned how to read.
We came home, ate breakfast and started making a cake. My husband went to work and I kicked back with my lap top, writing to my heart’s content. Eventually, I got my daughter off to school.
I went and got my hair cut.
I came home and gave myself a pedicure while my son slept.

I answered the door and was handed THE MOST beautiful bouquet, ordered by my husband who knows how much I loved MIXED bouquets.

I taught piano lessons and took my daughter to her very first EVER school open house.

I came home to TWO plates of goodies on my porch and then I took the kids up to my Mom’s house (you know, to remind her why my moving out was a good thing -as if her getting her sewing room back wasn’t good enough). I came home to an empty house (my husband sent me a message that he would be late for the stay-in date night we had planned) and I cleaned up the messes of the day, frosted my own cake, and JUST in time… my husband walked through the door and we ate fish tacos, recipe compliments of my brother Mike.

And oh MY those were the BEST tacos ever. We had just enough time to share a slow dance together and then we took my frosted cake up to my parents house where my kids could finish frosting it properly.

Gotta love kids with frosting.

We came home after a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” and put the kids to bed. We thought we’d stay up and watch a movie, but after flipping through our options seventy or so times, we decided sleep would be much cooler than staying up to watch a movie.
As we crawled under the covers, my husband apologized for “missing” most of my birthday (on account of work). I took a deep breath, inhaling the orchid scent coming from the headboard above me.
Bollocks.
He hadn’t missed my birthday. HE SENT ME FLOWERS.
My birthday had been such a perfect, perfect day.
We could stay up late and watch a movie any dang day.

I woke up the next day and replied to birthday greetings sent via text and facebook and I was overcome with GUILT because so many people had remembered my birthday -had sent goody plates, dropped by gifts, given me CHOCOLATE… and I’m HORRIBLE at remembering birthdays. I’m bloody horrible at it. I remember my family because after living with someone for over ten years you start to get the hang of things…
I’m so grateful for my good and forgiving friends and family. I’m so grateful for my life, my twenty seven years, my babies, my husband,
my supreme champion of a mother, my stalwart father,

(awwwwww, Dad…)

my siblings, my good inlaws, my… everything.
This is gonna be a good life.
A good, good life.

“When you’re happy like a fool, let it take you over.”
(sorry about the swearings in the video.)