My Birthday Gift to Me

Maybe the best birthday gifts are the ones you give yourself. I've never been very materialistic. Oh, I like having nice things, but I don't need dozens of the same item and I'm not a pack rat. As a kid I would occasionally ask my mom for Christmas gifts from the JC Penney catalog that she'd unfailingly veto. Of course I had no concept of money or that we had very little of it. The one thing she knew how to do, though, was nurture my imagination. It's a strange realization, because she and I were never close. She and my dad had six kids and I was no doubt a "surprise", born nine years after my brother. And here she thought she was done! I also wasn't "normal" in the sense that my likes were unpredictable. I never played with dolls, I never showed an interest in learning how to cook (like good little girls should). All I lived for was my imagination. Give me a coloring book and a box of crayons and I was captivated. I would sometimes spin my older sisters' records when they were away and dance in front of their dresser mirror, pretending I was the one on stage. My mom never once came upstairs to chastise me for being a dork, even though she could clearly hear the music playing loud. She left me to my own devices. Which rather sums up our relationship. But when Christmas rolled around each year, she'd surprise me with a gift I didn't even know I wanted, but I truly did. At five or six I got my first record player. Best gift I ever received. One year my parents (my mom) bought me a cardboard play store that my dad had to put together. It had a big open window in the front from which to wait on "customers", and it had shelves on each side for displaying my wares. There was even a flimsy plastic cash register. Every gift she gave me fueled my imagination. Allowed me to pretend. I guess she did know me after all, although she never once voiced it.

I wasn't into writing then, but I was definitely into reading. My elementary school library was a treasure chest just waiting to be opened. One particular shelf held books that appeared to be curated especially for me ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, biographies of historical figures, like Amelia Earhart. Overall, not much fiction if one doesn't count the embellishments that Wilder's daughter added, but I certainly didn't know they were embellishments at the time. The times when I had to write something for a school assignment, I dutifully did and did it well, but writing never lit a spark inside me. It was but one more thing I had to do, like studying the week's spelling words, although I really didn't need to study them. My prolific reading had taken care of that little chore.

Not having to try too hard got me through thirteen years of school (yes, kindergarten counts). But I don't want to sell myself short. I studied when it counted. In seventh grade my geography teacher assigned a TV documentary on the Amazon, which he would test us on the next day. I'm pretty certain hardly anyone else in my class even watched it, but not only did I watch it, I took copious notes. Getting A's was important to me, and would offset the middling grades I got in math and science, both of which I absolutely hated. My favorite high school/junior high school courses were English, art, history, and believe it or not (though I would never admit it), poetry. Poetry was an elective, which I was assured by other dumb kids would be a breeze. One day the teacher informed us we'd need to write an original long-form poem, in a specific pentameter, and I went home and worked my ass off on it. He'd warned us that if we were unwilling to read our poem in front of the class, it would be an automatic grade reduction. The last thing I would ever, ever do would be to stand up in front of people, so he gave my poem a B. You know what that means ~ I'd pulled it off ~ I'd penned an A-worthy one.

All the things that didn't seem noteworthy throughout my childhood turned out to be consequential, from receiving that record player, to playing pretend store clerk, to writing poetry, to reading; lots and lots of reading. I eventually became a songwriter and a good one. I could even sing those songs adequately. Attention to detail, as in scribbling notes about the Amazon River, helped me to pay close attention to a story ~ to retain its thread throughout and to sequence it logically. Even coloring a picture in a book contributed to a knowledge of design and photo composition, which made me a good photographer and now allows me to create a decent book cover. 

So my birthday gift to me is making use of all those things in a new, creative passion; remembering them, even subconsciously, and gathering them all together to form something new.

And my second gift to me is an acknowledgement that I keep learning. I fail, but I struggle up off the floor and try again. I take what I did wrong and try the opposite, just like George Costanza. 😊   

My internal voice likes to dwell on my inadequacies, but I'm not that bad. In some ways, I'm pretty good. That realization is a gift.