Don’t Tell Me I’m Too Old for a Birthday Party

It’s all Mom’s fault. Every birthday, I woke up to find my bed covered with gifts and cards. I got to wear new clothes to school and eat whatever I wanted for dinner. We had company, cake and singing, and I felt like a princess.

Somehow, now that I’m a grownup, it doesn’t happen quite that way. The plumbing backs up, clients want their work on time and don’t care if it’s my birthday, and most of the family kind of forgets that hey, it’s my special day.

Hello! It’s March 9th. It’s my birthday.

It seems as if once you pass a certain age, you’re not supposed to celebrate birthdays. At least not so that anyone would notice. Just another day, says my brother. Don’t you dare tell anyone it’s my birthday, says a friend at church. One year closer to death, says another gloomy friend. I don’t have birthdays anymore, yet another friend responds when asked if this might possibly be her birthday.

Not me. I want to celebrate. I’m still alive, still healthy, still doing what I want to do. Sure, I’m older, but I don’t feel any older. I think a birthday is an important occasion, time to look at yourself and your life and thank God for the good things and resolve to get rid of the bad things. It’s a time to say, “Hoorah, I have passed another milestone.”

 It’s the beginning of a whole new year of life.

I still have fantasies of the family gathered around, torn wrapping paper and presents at my feet, and chocolate cake on a plate in my lap--with big frosting flowers so sugary they make your teeth hurt. I want to see the lit candles in the dark and hear everyone singing to me.

Me, me, me. I recently discovered that large groups of Christians and others don’t approve of birthdays. There’s the “me, me, me,” factor, selfish, spoiled and ungodly. But also, the whole cake-and-candle tradition began as a pagan rite to ward off evil spirits thousands of years ago. Since Jesus never mentioned birthday parties in the Bible, we have no scriptural basis for having them. Furthermore, keeping track of birthdays smacks of astrology, a kissing cousin of witchcraft.

Holy cow, but my saintly Catholic mother started it. If Mom baked the cake with her own hands and lit the candles and sang “Happy Birthday” to me, how could it be bad? She wasn’t singing to chase away evil spirits; she was singing about how she loved me. And maybe celebrating having gotten this accident-prone offspring through another year of life.

In our American culture, kids get birthday parties. We also throw parties for adults celebrating the so-called milestone birthdays: 21, 40, 50, 65, 80, 90, 100. For the years in-between, things sort of fall apart. You don’t get a party, unless you’re like our departed friend Robert who used to throw himself a whopper of a fiesta every year, with tons of food, a huge crowd, and hangovers that lasted for a week.

The rest of us mark our birthdays with sedate lunches, cakes at the office, and a few cards--some of which arrive a week or more after the actual birthday. Now we also get e-mail cards from those family members who will never get their act together enough to actually buy, sign and mail a real card. Last year, I received one with three pigs singing “Happy Birthday” to the tune of “Funiculi Funicula.” I read it, I laughed, it was gone.

Over the years, I have developed certain birthday rituals. My favorite is to run away for the day, then go out for dinner and cake that evening. On a typical birthday when Fred was still here, I drove north up the coast. I did some shopping at the outlet stores in Lincoln City, took myself to lunch, visited the quilt museum in Tillamook and walked on the beach. At Cape Lookout, I stood high over the Pacific Ocean and blew soap bubbles from a red plastic bottle of Mr. Bubble, watching them float into the sky and disappear into the clouds. I thought about my life, counted my blessings, and made some plans. Then I came home and pigged out on chocolate with my faithful husband, whom I had programmed for a month to either honor my birthday or sleep with the dog.

Aside from lunch with friends, I don’t know what I’ll do this year, but I do know that it’s supposed to be a special day. Mom always said so.

Perhaps it’s unseemly to celebrate one’s birthday as if one were still a child. Perhaps it’s even sinful. But I don’t believe it. God gave us this life, and if he grants us another year, I think it would be ungrateful not to celebrate as hard as we can.

Don't miss my birthday book giveaway!

Tomorrow is my birthday. To celebrate, I am offering free books. Yes, free. I have a giveaway for my latest book, Shoes Full of Sand, going on at goodreads.com. For tomorrow, March 9, only, I will offer the ebook versions of Shoes Full of Sand and Azorean Dreams for free. And I will give a free copy of any one of my four in-print books to one lucky person who comments on any of my blogs on March 9. I will collect the names and draw the winner on March 10.

The books are Stories Grandma Never Told, Azorean Dreams, Freelancing for Newspapers, and Shoes Full of Sand. Read about them at http://www.suelick.com/Products.html.

The blogs are: Childless by Marriage, Unleashed in Oregon, Portuguese Grandma Stories, Writer Aid, and Everything But Writing. 

Happy reading!

Walking the Bayfront in a post-tax haze

Almost all of the snow had melted at the edges of Bay Street as I walked the Bayfront yesterday in a daze. I had just come from having my taxes done. It was the first time I had ever paid someone to do my return. My late husband Fred was a licensed tax preparer and started doing mine shortly after we met. When he became incapacitated, I used Turbo Tax to do it myself.

But this year, with Fred having died and a trust, Medicaid and other issues to deal with, I decided I needed help. As it turns out, this year's return wasn't much different from the others. This would be our last joint return, but otherwise it was money in and money out as usual.

I was in shock for a lot of reasons. It was hard doing this without Fred, talking so much about him being dead and going over the expenses from the early months of 2011 when he was so sick. It was difficult having to enumerate all of my writing expenses, medical expenses, and charity deductions, to pull together a whole year of life that was often fogged by grief. And then I was gobsmacked to discover the preparer's services would cost me $550. I have to pay $350 to the state of Oregon, less than I paid last year. But I am getting a refund from the federal government. Next year, as a single woman with a lower income and fewer pieces of paper, the whole process will be simpler. I think I'll go back to doing it myself.

Doing taxes is a profitable gig. Tax money took Fred and me on many wonderful vacations to places like Portugal, Costa Rica, Canada, and Hawaii. Our trips, like our wedding, always happened after tax season. During tax season, Fred worked like a madman, rarely coming up for air. Our phone rang constantly with tax clients wanting to set up appointments, ask questions, or find out when their returns would be ready.

I have often wished I had the aptitude to prepare other people's tax returns myself. There's money to be made, and I like numbers, but they just don't behave when I deal with them. I'm a words and music girl. Besides, tax returns are stressful. I used to feel the tension in Fred's clients, just like I felt it in myself yesterday as I sat in the tax office, anxiously watching the preparer type numbers into her computer. Would I have to pay? Would they accept my deductions? Would I have all the numbers and forms I needed?

Coming out of the tax office, I gulped air and headed for the Bayfront. Despite the morning's surprise snow shower, the sun was out. The street was fairly deserted, but I passed a family staring into the candy shop, men smoking outside the fish plant, and a young woman smoking outside the Bay Haven tavern. Glass art, kites, tee shirts and geegaws of all sorts sparkled in the gift shops. Late afternoon diners lingered over pizza and beer at Rogue Ale and shrimp melts at Local Ocean. I stood at the rail outside the Noodle Cafe and stared at the big white NOAA ships anchored across the bay. Cormorants and gulls glided by in the bright sky. I noticed an empty crab shell on the deck and wondered how it got there. Then I walked past Port Dock I restaurant, closed for storm damage repairs, to where the sea lions usually congregate on floating docks. They weren't there. It's winter on the Bayfront. I zipped Fred's old jacket tight around me against the cold wind and walked from one end of the Bayfront to the other, the sun in my eyes slowly burning away the post-tax-appointment haze.

In my mind, I have already spent my refund four different ways. May your taxes turn out as well.

Our First Seafood & Wine Festival

Last weekend, thousands of visitors invaded Newport for the 35th annual Seafood and Wine festival. Imagine being crammed in an oversized tent where the temperature is 40 degrees, everyone is drinking, and you can barely move. Fun! Like many locals, I usually stay away, but I appreciate the big boost it gives our local economy as festivalgoers pack our hotels, restaurants and shops.

Once upon a time, my husband Fred and I and our friends Larry and Jennifer Anderson were visitors, too. It was February 1996. The Andersons had already moved from San Jose to Bay City, up the coast just north of Tillamook. We agreed to meet in Lincoln City, taking rooms at the Ester Lee Motel on Friday night and driving down to the festival in Newport on Saturday.

Locals remember the winter of 1996 for its epic storms. We were not prepared. Oh yes, we brought some light waterproof jackets, but we must have figured this would be like Hawaii, where it rains but it's not very cold. Uh, no. That first night, we ordered pizza and congregated in the Andersons' room as the storm ramped up. Rain turned puddles into lakes in the parking lot as the window blew so hard we could see the our ocean-view windows bowing in and out. It took over an hour for the pizza delivery guy to get there, and he looked absolutely drowned. We tipped him ten dollars for his efforts and settled in with lots of wine. Surely in the morning, the weather would be better.

No again. Yes, the rain and wind had eased up. Now we had snow. It drifted down from the sky and piled up on the windowsills and on the sand. We decided against our planned walk on the beach. Even in our cozy suite with fireplace, kitchen, living room and bedroom, we were freezing. We had shivered all night. Instead of going to the beach, we drove to the outlet stores for warmer clothing. Then we piled into our car and drove to Newport.

I've never been much of a wine drinker, but Fred and our friends loved the stuff. In fact, Fred had started working part-time in a tasting room at a winery in San Jose, and he was building quite a collection of vintage reds. When we got to the festival, they dove in, despite being surprised at having to pay to taste. Wine-tasting was generally free in California. Here they wanted a dollar for a few drops in what looked like a Nyquil cup. But they drank and got happy while I searched out the seafood and Tillamook chocolate. This was a cultural experience, far different from the many outdoor art and wine festivals we had attended in the Bay Area, where you could sprawl on the grass in the sun with your wine and listen to live bluegrass or jazz.

After a few hours, I grew anxious to go someplace warm where I could move my arms without touching a stranger and regain feeling in my frozen toes. But oh, they were getting very happy. Finally, as the daylight waned, I convinced my group that it was time to go. They had tasted and talked and were ready for naps. "You drive," they said. Was there a choice? I had not driven in snow before, and it was a good 45 minutes or windy two-lane roads back to the Ester Lee. Except for when I was cursing, I was holding my breath, hoping the tires wouldn't slip.

We made it, stumbling into our rooms with our commemorative wine glasses. By morning, the snow had melted. Locals assured us this weather was a freak occurence. Six months later, Fred and I moved to Oregon.

R.I.P. Scott Paterson, musician and friend

Scott Paterson looked like an old hippie, long-limbed and bony, with a brown ponytail, bad teeth and sunken cheeks. He was a Vietnam vet, a surfer, a cowboy, a logger, a sometimes hermit, a six-time husband with several estranged kids and grandkids, a recovering alcoholic, and a musician. He played guitar and wrote songs unlike anybody else’s songs, with titles including “Up Country,” “Slow Wind” and “Psychotic Love.” 

In other words, he was the kind of guy my dad would dismiss as a bum. But Dad would be wrong. Scott died on Feb. 7 at age 64. I had heard he had lung cancer, but the newspaper said it was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Either way, his diseased lungs killed him off. We gathered at the Newport Senior Center on Saturday to honor his memory.

It was quite a mixed gathering. Scott had been leader of the Lincoln City VFW post, so old people all dressed up occupied the center table. A gray-haired trumpeter blew taps and presented a triangle-folded U.S. flag to Scott’s tall, skinny, tattooed, red-haired, blue-jeaned daughter Darsea. Scott had been musical partners with Renae, a tiny gay lady with a mullet hairdo. Renae picked up her flute and played “Amazing Grace” like liquid silver.

Scott and Renae, who called themselves Sea Changes, had hosted an open mic for years. That’s how I happened to be there. I would come play my guitar and try out new songs on Sunday afternoons. So the audience included musicians of all sorts. Gus played his saxophone. Debbie played her mandolin, accompanied by her husband Randy on guitar.

Unlike the many religious services I have attended, this was just a steady stream of memories. Renae and Darsea had laid out hundreds of photos of Scott from the various stages of his life, from little boy to soldier to father to musician. Among them, they placed pictures of us playing our music at the open mic and encouraged us to take them home. I’ve got a picture on my refrigerator now of me sitting in a chair playing classical guitar. I can picture Scott off to the side, cheering me on. The display also included the article I wrote about Sea Changes for Northwest Senior News back in 2007, when the band included mandolinist Kate Scannell, and the three never stopped teasing each other.

One person after another came up to talk. Many, including some of the musicians, knew Scott well from the sobriety community. The only prayer we prayed was the serenity prayer. Tears filled my eyes as we said, “God grant me the serenity . . .”

So many losses lately. I’ll miss Scott.

As I said, Dad would have dismissed Scott as a bum, although in truth he worked most of his life. There were those times when he took to a cabin in the woods and disappeared, but he worked at all kinds of jobs, and he worked hard until illness forced him to go on disability. He had all those wives and all those kids and was estranged from nearly all of them. He struggled with substance abuse and PTSD. But the constant theme from every speaker at his memorial was Scott’s kindness. Everyone had a story of how he loved and encouraged them and helped in times of need.

There were tears and laughs. Debra Lee, his last girlfriend, told how Scott had asked her to be wife number seven, but he lived way up a muddy road in a cabin with no running water and she was a city girl, so she said, “No.” But she loved him, and his last words to her were “I love you.” Those were our last words to Scott, too, as we adjourned to take another look at the photos and visit over cupcakes and cookies as his music played in the background.

Under the Depoe Bay Bridge

When I was Depoe Bay last week to do a story on saltwater taffy (Oregon Coast Today, next Friday), I headed across Highway 101 to use the restroom at the whale watching center. Usually you can visit the facility downstairs, then head upstairs for a great view of the ocean and a chance to see a whale. Or you can stay on the main floor and peruse the whale museum and the gift shop. But not this time. A sign on the door told me the building is closed for renovations.

Sigh. Behind me stood a big tan port-a-potty. It was like going to the bathroom on the freeway, but when you've gotta go, you've gotta go.

Afterward, as I started back toward the road, but I noticed a set of stairs heading in a direction I had never been. The stairs led me under the Depoe Bay Bridge, where the view was fascinating, the bridge posts framing the world's smallest navigable harbor. The thick concrete muffled the sounds of the cars driving over me and shielded me from the light rain. A sea gull roosted in one corner, a pigeon in another.

I never thought much about the Depoe Bay Bridge. Last October, Newport went crazy as the Yaquina Bay Bridge celebrated its 75th anniversary, but the Depoe Bay Bridge, also the work of famous bridge engineer Conde McCullough, is older. 

The original 312-foot long bridge with its 150-foot arch was built in 1927. It was expanded in 1940 to accommodate four lanes of traffic. Eighty-five years later, here I am walking underneath with my little digital camera. When last year's tsunami hit, it damaged the nearby docks, but the bridge stood strong, as it has all these years. I'm so glad I took those stairs.

All contents copyright 2012 Sue Fagalde Lick

Sing Your Song Now

This past week, I’ve been thinking about death. On Friday, I heard about the deaths of two friends, the mother of a woman I sing with at church and the husband of my lifelong best friend, Sherri.

Catherine, the mother, was 89. She had suffered from the effects of a stroke for many years, and she had been bedridden since October. For years, I saw her sitting in the front row at church, a little confused, most of her hair gone, but so in love with God. Shortly before Catherine died, she told her nurse, “My stroke is better.” She was ready to go. Last Thursday, she passed peacefully into the next life. We’re singing at her funeral this coming Thursday, repeating the songs that were sung at her husband’s funeral in 1993. They’re together now.

After I heard about Catherine’s death, I gave up on work. Whenever someone I know dies now, I relive my husband’s and my mother’s deaths. I need time to deal with the turmoil in my mind and my heart. We had sunshine and blue sky with the most fascinating cloud patterns, the kind in which you can imagine all kinds of things, from animals to angels. I lay on the deck and watched them slowly change.

As the afternoon wore on, I took Annie to the dog park, where she romped with four other big dogs and a shitzu-maltese that didn’t realize it was little.

It was at the dog park that I got Sherri’s call, one I had been fearing. Her husband, Gene, had been in the hospital for two weeks, unconscious the whole time. A massive heart attack, coupled with out-of-control diabetes and kidney failure, offered a bleak prognosis, and he died. A week before he went to the hospital, they had been living a normal life with no idea that he would not make it to the end of the month. Gene was 69.

Sherri married Gene the same year I married Fred. We have shared so many things in our life. From first grade through high school, Sherri and I were always together. We went through lost teeth, First Communion, first periods and first bras, first crushes, and first attempts to play the guitar. We both married divorced men who had three children from their first marriages. As we aged, we saw the same chiropractor and took the same pills. When another friend and I formed a traveling vocal group, Gene sang bass with my husband Fred. I can still see them in their white shirts and red bow ties.

Sherri worked at Los Gatos Town Hall while I worked at the Los Gatos Weekly-Times. Eventually we both left California, but for different reasons. Sherri and Gene ran into financial trouble, lost their house and hoped to start fresh in a small home on a big patch of land in Texas. They had only been there eight months when Gene went to the hospital in Ft. Worth. Sherri buried her husband on her 60th birthday. I’ll be 60 next month. Now, we have something else in common, something no one would ever wish for: We’re both widows.

I’m thinking a lot about death these days. You never know when it will happen. If there’s something you must do in this life, do it now. Yesterday, I sat in the sun playing my guitar and singing for a long time. It felt good. It felt right. If you have a song that needs singing, sing it now.

Rest in peace, Catherine and Gene. May God be with your loved ones as they go on without you.