Cody
Williams
My Views
"Happy Teddy Bear Day"
I know, as I’m sure we all do, a woman who every year turns her birthday into a week long celebration, culminating with a big backyard cookout with lots of gifts and glowing testimonials from family and friends where she drinks herself into a mind numbing stupor hoping to deaden the pain, guilt, self-hatred and loneliness she feels most other days of the year. Each and every year.
Birthdays are great and many of us like to have them at least acknowledged by those closes to us. It’s the one time of year where we legitimately get to say, “this day is mine, alone and I don’t have to share it with nobody.” It’s about me, pay attention to me. Stroke me. Although we, each day of the year, in different ways, like to call attention to ourselves. We long for attention. Women dye their hair henna, raise the heel on their pumps, and pierce their belly button. Guys may pierce a nipple and pump up muscle. We throw temper tantrums and cry foul. All this to call attention to our selves on the birthdays of others, but when it’s our day, world stop, please, and turn my way. Buy me a card, take me to dinner, raise your glass, spend your money and toast me.
Well today on the 20 of August, no one’s birthday I know of in particularly, my three-and-a half-year-old son picked up a stuffed baby blue heart shaped pillow that decorates his bed and handed it to me. He said, “Happy Valentine’s Day, daddy.” I smiled and said thank you, son. Then he ran back into his room and brought out a star shaped powder blue pillow and said, “Happy Star Day, daddy.” I grinned and said thank you again. Overjoyed, he ran back into his room and returned hugging his Tickle-Me-Elmo doll. Handing it to me he said, “Happy Elmo Day.” I’m completely floored at this point. My day, whatever day it was, was made. It could not have gotten any happier.
It was just before his bedtime when from somewhere every night he summons up just enough energy to gallantly fight off any attempt to put him to bed without a fight. He ran in and out of his bedroom wishing me a “Happy Teddy Bear Day,” “Happy Baby Sister Day,” “Happy Toy Train Day.” True story. So I got to thinking how in his innocence he turned just any ol’ day of the year into a special holiday, celebrating not him, (aren’t children supposed to be self-centered?), but the ordinary things that make up his everyday life. It reminded me of Winnie the Pooh stopping by Christopher Robin’s house just to wish him a happy Tuesday.
Why wait until the anniversary of our birth to celebrate living? Celebrate each day for what it is, a new beginning, an innocent opportunity to smile. Why obligate others to turn our birthdays into a bottomless pit of unsatisfying self-idol worshipping faux-love fest? Would it not be more fulfilling if, like Christ, we gave to others, instead of demanding for ourselves, the day of the year on which we were born?
Who am I kidding, right?
It ain’t gonna happen. Few of us can truly love others more than we love our selves. Most of us have been too jaded in life to return to the innocence, where, like Pooh and my three- year-old, any Tuesday or Thursday can be a day to share with another, “Happy Today to you.”
(c) copyright 2003 Cody Williams
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