My Birthday

My mother told me she was suicidal when she was pregnant with me. So she read Emily Dickinson poems and named me after her. My parents had a fight in the NYC Flower Fifth Avenue hospital on the day I was born about how to spell my middle name. They divorced shortly after. 

My mother once took me to an near-empty Chinese restaurant for my 10th birthday. She sipped tea and watched me eat. For my 23rd birthday she gave me a gigantic navy blue men's sweater. This was at 7AM before my step father left to go to work. It was meant to cover my whole body, the kind of giant sweater that she loved to wear to cover her scoliosis. 

After moving away from home, I gave myself a party to celebrate my 30th. During the party my stepfather called me to scold me for having a party without them. I hung up on him and avoided speaking to them for nearly a decade.

A few years later, my parents went to the off-Broadway theater in New York where friends of mine were performing. This was on my birthday. They went backstage to meet my friends. They later told me "we celebrated your birthday," by going to the theater and meeting your friends, and then later asked me how is it that my friends like me.

This morning I awoke to snow. I went out in the dark and shoveled the shared driveway. I love snow. I love shoveling it. My neighbor Rick came out on his 3rd floor porch to tell me I was crazy but he loved me. "I love this," I said. "I know you do!" he said. Then I came inside and fixed a mug of ovaltine. Nobody knows it's my birthday and it's perfect.