“How about I book us a hotel for 3 nights in Manhattan for your birthday? We can leave on Sunday evening, see a show, try a new restaurant. You always like being in the city?” Mark popped the question three days ago on Wednesday, less than one week before my upcoming birthday on September 23rd.
“Sure, that’s a good idea!” I responded enthusiastically -and a bit half-heartedly. Mark and I both knew the reason.
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When my sister and I arrived in New York twenty five years ago, we made a fun promise to each other. We were going to plan elaborate surprise birthdays for each other. Partly it was because we were young and adventurous and loved to do things together. But I think mostly because we were reacting to the previous 7 years we had spent in misery. After our mom passed away and our father remarried, we had been subjected to a perfect step-daughterly treatment. It was almost as if we went from being our mother’s princesses to being the Cider-girls. And last thing Cinder-girls get is pampering on their birthdays. Now having made our way through sheer grit to America, we wanted to shake off the stench of heartache, pain and the feeling of being step-children who were treated as such. We were going to celebrate life in a way only survivors do, we went a bit berserk!
Over the next 9 years we planned elaborate birthdays for each other, surprises that took us to Italy and France and England and Ireland, to the top of Mt. Mauna Kea in Hawaii and under the northern lights at Arctic Circle. We pampered each other through our love and celebrated life, we lived as if there was no tomorrow.
And then, all of a sudden like a badly scripted anti-climax in a film, my sister got diagnosed with cancer and passed away in a matter of months. Stunned and traumatized for a second time – first mother, then sister – I lost all zest for life.
Then I met Mark. And somehow, somehow life returned and with it, old ingrained habits – by that I mean planning elaborate birthdays. When I planned Mark’s first surprise birthday trip he got so overwhelmed he told me that it was entirely beyond him to return the favor – in hind sight, his fears have been unfounded. Within a year or two, Mark had planned a fabulous surprise trip for my birthday to Poland, with his own unique stamp, a trend he has continued to follow. But at the time I understood his anxiety and told him not to worry, I was truly doing it because I wanted to and because I needed to keep Didi’s legacy alive. Deep down I knew it was a way for me to say “yes” to life.
Which was a very hard thing to do. Because deep down I also knew that I wasn’t going to live past the age of 44, which is how old my mom was when she had died. There is something oddly mysterious about how the age and manner of our loved one deaths’ leave an imprint on us. There are stories upon stories of people encountering death in some manner when they turn the age that took away their loved one from them.
The same happened to me. The year I turned 43, all hell broke loose. I got very very ill. It was the same thing that took my mom. Things came to a head on my 44th birthday, when in the middle of a much more subdued birthday trip in upstate New York, Mark had to drive me to the ER. On September 23rd four years ago, I understood that the Reaper had come knocking again and this time for me. I was scared shitless – but not surprised. He had been lurking around me like a spurned, jilted lover for more than a decade, years I had spent in the twilight zone of the half-living, somewhat adrift and unmoored by the loss of most of my family. I had to make a decision – this world or that.
I decided THIS ONE! I was going to survive and learn to live again – fully. Through the excruciating weeks and months ahead, I tuned into my injured spirit and asked her what she needed. “Family” came back the answer.
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Back – to – last – Wednesday. Mark had asked me if I would like to spend a few days in Manhattan. This was most unusual – because as you know we plan birthdays a little more in advance. The trouble is over the past 3 years, we had been celebrating my birthday with the families we had created – with the exchange students we had hosted and with the foster children we had embraced. We had been postponing any birthday trip planning for this year to include the child we were going to host or foster for the year. I guess you could say we had been spoilt by the love of the daughters we had welcomed in our lives and the families we had created together. But the child hadn’t materialized and it was less than a week to my birthday.
“Sure, that’s a good idea!” – I said to Mark enthusiastically – and a bit half-heartedly.
“Ok, I will book the hotel tomorrow night then”, he responded similarly.
That was Wednesday night. Thursday came – as it tends to do! I was at my desk working when a text arrived from a person I can best describe as “the harbinger of all good things in our lives”. Let’s call her Barb! Barb told me about a Spanish exchange student who needed immediate placement and asked “Would you and Mark be open to hosting her for the year?”
In an instant I knew – that life was speaking to me again. On Thursday night instead of booking an NYC hotel for 2 people for my bday, Mark & I said Yes to Barb and prepared for the arrival of our new student-daughter. She arrived this afternoon.
So once again life has surprised me. And I am looking forward to celebrating its gifts of love, family, and new beginnings with Mark and Diana on September 23rd.
Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also a trained facilitator for Crossing Party Lines moderating conversations that bring people together across their political divides. Swati is also an environmentalist and lives in a Net Zero Energy home with her husband. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com