Same Time, Every Year

I don't cry.

I've always despised tears, you know? Just a cheap way of pissing away pain and feeling and comprehension.

But after 6 September 1994, something broke in me. I can't seem to stop the tears.

The date comes around and there I go. I weep for what I had, what I lost, what I threw away and didn't fight for. Tears may be cheap but my eyes leak saltwater, splashing my feet, tears like a river, pain and grief and regret and guilt, flowing to the sea.

And yet, every 6 September? I realise I still have tears.

The biggest event in your life never got commemorated, because of the last time, when your words failed and it made you sad to answer every friendly “How’s the book coming?” with a glum but realistic “It’s not.”It had some humor and warmth but no real foundation. It was more like...book batter, really. It was supposed to fail, because you were barely twenty then, but it was a blow to your considerable, but misplaced pride. So this time, you write like a secret agent, not buttonholing people to read them good paragraphs, keeping plot points a tight secret. Because this isn’t like being a kid and putting a spelling test on the fridge...there is pain and violence in this one.

Creating Traditions

My birthdays were always the same: same cake, same weather, same friends. Mallory’s birthday won’t ever be the same more than two years in a row: we'll move every couple of years. Ingredients for cakes will change, friends won’t be there, heck, his birthday might not always be in the spring.

But continuity is necessary. Some touchstone, some temporal checkpoint, something to say "This is mine and I know this."

Entire cultures choose how they celebrate events. We are a culture of three, and rootless. What thing can we do once a year that Mallory will know is his?

Raq, what you wrote really resonates with me. Ellie's first birthday will most likely be spent in a hotel room in Puerto Rico far away from every one we know - except us. I've been planning an early birthday for her here, to do my best to make it the way my birthdays were, but it will be hard. I like your attitude better, although I'm not sure I'd be bale to completely adopt it.

Seems to me the first few birthdays are more for the parents than the children. What is the first birthday any of you actually remember? Mine was my fourth.

"Birthday" is the event that occurred to me too for this topic. I hesitated to post this story because it is a lot like my last one, but both events really happened and with hindsight it seems to me that enduring this one is probably what enabled me to brazen out the other one.

Drabble: commemorating an event

My grandmother had us stop for lunch at this new place she had heard about.

We were almost done with our sandwiches when suddenly a siren howled, whistles blew, lights flashed, and six singing clapping waiters marched up to our table and presented me with a small birthday cake topped with candles and sparklers.

I was stunned. Appalled. Mortified. Eleven.

My grandmother was delighted. She sang and clapped along through the whole performance, then turned to me with a huge smile and said, "I called ahead. Isn't it fun?"

What could I say? I lied. "It's great. Terrific. Thank you."

Raq, Jo's first birthday, she was sitting in her bouncing chair on a conference room table in OPEC's office in Geneva, sucking her dummy and glaring at a circle of men in turbans. Her second birthday, she was with me on a plane, relocating back to San Francisco from London.

dcp is right, the first few are strictly for the parents. And look at it this way: with the entire world to choose from, whatever traditions end up being Mallory's, they aint gonna be boring.

Commemoration (or however many M's there are)

At the end of days, we shall all appear before the infinite to show the tapestries we have made of our lives and to explain the colors and designs we chose.

I think some are going to be dismayed at how tarnished the glittering treasures they gathered appear in this venue. The wealth itself doesn't shine, but the purposes it went toward can glow. Honest charity and solid works gleam in all colors.

I'll never have wealth, but I'm satisfied that the weavings of honor and courage and faith I present will show richly enough against the glitter and will be judged worthy.

connie, that was simply beautiful.

Commemorating an event

For years I can’t help it—any time the song plays I smell you and I taste you and I want to touch you. It whips me right back to that night, to the madness, the hunger, and that song playing on MTV behind us, seemingly forever, with us too distracted to turn it off as it burnt itself into my memories.

It doesn’t work for me anymore. I hear the song and think of not wanting you; I think of no longer being the girl that thrilled to your touch.

I don’t miss it.

I need a new song.

DAMN, ita.

You just played my song.