Cape May. The place is enshrouded in fog, and I like the feel of the wind on my face. At 6:10 a.m. I’ve got the piazza at Congress Hall to myself, and other than screeching seagulls and the roar of the surf, it’s blissfully quiet. What more could I ask for my birthday?
Daughter Daphne and her husband, Etan, will be flying in from Orlando later this morning. Tonight they will join Dennis and me for a dinner celebration at the Ebbitt Room. It was sweet of her to ask me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said an iTunes gift card would be nice.
It seems like the only way I can download Abraham, Martin and John is to purchase an entire Dion album – along with Donna the Prima Donna and other songs I’m not sure I need. For $10, it has always seemed like an extravagance, but I’ll probably get it with my gift card.
With a summer birthday and a mom unwilling to move the celebration ahead to coincide with the school year, I missed being able to celebrate with classmates. The offer of a Halloween party instead didn’t cut it, because who gets presents at Halloween?
Still I’ve had some great birthday celebrations, three of which are especially memorable:
(1) Belle Harbor, New York 1958. We were in a rented summer home in a lovely enclave of Rockaway Beach. I knew no one other than the kids I met playing on the sidewalk in front of the house. Still I aspired to have a party just like a 13-year-old named Joanne Chappy. Her parents were divorced, and I envied the fact that she lived at the beach all year long with her grandmother in the house behind us.
Joanne’s friends danced to Rockin Robin, a hit single recorded by a guy named Bobby Day, as well as the tunes of Richie Valens, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. The party lasted way past my bedtime, but I enjoyed listening to the music with my nose pressed against the screen of my bedroom window.
My own party was in the afternoon. Although I can’t recall any dancing, I was thrilled to get a miniature stiff cardboard case in which to carry my vinyl 45’s – along with the Rockin Robbin single. I was also delighted to get what seemed like a six-month supply of bubble bath and cheap cologne.
(2) Lake Mahopac, New York 1964. Summers at Lake Mahopac were deliciously unstructured. I spent my days hanging out on a small private beach down a steep hill from the house, often doing nothing more taxing than swimming out to the wood raft where I would work on my tan. My brother and I also did a lot of water-skiing, despite Dad’s setting a limit of one tank of gas for the speedboat per day.
Mom and Dad agreed to host an evening birthday party in the back yard of the summer home that by then Grandma and Grandpa had owned for four years. We had pizza, birthday cake, and ice cream. I think the only thing Mom did to embarrass me was bring out the Pin the Tail on the Donkey set.
That was the year I got the best loot ever. The vinyl 45’s had given way to entire albums. Warren Feldman gave me the Beach Boys’s All Summer Long, and Stevie Alter gave me the Beatles’ Something New, Something New. I got two pieces of costume jewelry, both pins my mom ended up wearing -- a porcelain pumpkin and a gold leaf with a pearl.
(3) Brookline, MA 1991. This was a lonely time in my life, but also a period of forced personal growth. My first husband had died roughly 18 months earlier, Daphne was off at overnight camp, and Dennis was not to come into my life for four more years. Although sweet, compassionate colleagues had come to the rescue the previous year, it was now time for me to prove to myself that I could create my own birthday celebration.
Having just begun taking ballroom dance lessons, I hauled myself off to a beautiful, mahogany-paneled ballroom with lots of mirrors. I had no dance partner, but my sense of the culture told me it was acceptable for unattached women to ask unattached men to dance. Besides, it was time to get some practice with partners other than the teacher at the Arthur Murray studio.
This was the first of many Thursdays dancing to big band sounds at a place called Veronique. The bandleader once told me he admired my ability to come week after week, and and ask men I didn't know for a dance. I never told him the experience was providing me with more self-confidence than I'd ever had.
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