There are lots of birthdays at this time of year. I’m sure there is absolutely no coincidence that we are about 40 weeks from New Year. I have always felt a pressure to celebrate that I didn’t always want. A birthday at the beginning of October is at exactly the right time for people to want to go out. It’s far enough away from Summer-Socialising not to blur into the endless round of picnics, outdoor drinking and general merriment and not near enough Christmas for people to be saving or broke. My Mum’s birthday was at the beginning of January and so she always missed out on her day. Everyone was exhausted by the whole Christmas/New Year extravaganza that her birthday was almost forgotten. My sister’s birthday at the beginning of December was similarly blighted by Christmas. It was always hard to find a birthday card in the shops as they would replace racks with Christmas cards for your Nan and the excitement of putting the tree up always had to be delayed until after her birthday (a tradition I still uphold)
For some reason, my birthday always makes me feel a little sad. It always has. I remember hiding in a wardrobe and crying on my birthday when I was only 3. You would think that I couldn’t know it was my third birthday but I remember being in that cupboard with Big Nanny standing outside telling me that I was a big girl now that I was three. She said that I couldn’t cry on my birthday because then I’d cry all year round and that I needed to put a brace face on it and not spoil the day for everyone else. Iron fist in a velvet glove. When I came out there was a warm embrace waiting for me in her huge bosom and then we looked in the mirror together and she sang to me and tried to make me smile. In the end she fed me chocolate: a piece of Fry’s Chocolate Cream that she had in her pocket. If I’m sad now I still look in the mirror to check that I’m still there and eat chocolate, although not Fry’s chocolate cream because it’s disgusting.
This week is also baby loss awareness week and I’ve often wondered if my sadness on my birthday that year, that has stayed with me like a shadow of the unspoken was actually about death of my two siblings on their birthdays. We never really know what children take in because they don’t have the language or experience to express the thoughts but I do remember trying to run away when my mum was pregnant and being caught and told off by the midwife. As running away was a strong instinct in more recent griefs I do wonder.
The morning before my birthday, I woke up in a complete panic because I didn’t know the birth date of a fictional character I’m writing about. I logged onto FindMyPast and suddenly realised that I wouldn’t find it there because I made her up and she could have whatever day she wanted.
FindMyPast is one of my favourite ways to spend my time and as I started to write this blog I realised that I didn’t know when my siblings were born or died. I knew that it was the most awful experience for my parents and that it was caused by Rhesus haemolytic disease and the babies had just been taken away immediately and when they died not even shown to my parents. I can only imagine what kind of state they were in. I just found out that my third birthday party would have been two weeks after the first death.
Suddenly, I can taste that piece of Fry’s chocolate cream. The cloying stickiness at the roof of my mouth. Coincidentally, today is also the date of Elizabeth Fry’s (the prison reformer) death (176 years ago) Fry’s was her husband’s chocolate company and I believe her picture used to be on the packet.
Everything is connected if you think hard enough.
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