My birthday and why I love it...(a random shout out to my one and only)

Oddly enough, one of my favorite things about myself is my birthday. Every year, my birthday stands at the entrance of the unofficial start of summer, Memorial Day Weekend, and I am able to celebrate outdoors with sun, drinks, and fun. For many people, being outside is probably no big deal, but for us Chicagoans - summertime is our little piece of heaven considering our 6-9 months of rain, snow, wind, and frostbite.

Despite my love of my birth-DAY, the celebration of my birthday has always been very tricky. From the age of 0 - 18, my mother and father made sure to make birthdays special. My mother would buy balloons, my father would buy a plant (he's from Mississippi and doesn't believe in buying flowers) and they would sing "Happy Birthday" with a cake until I blew out the candles. Then they would top it off with a card full of money ("full of money" could mean anything from $20 to $300 dollars, depending on how much they liked you at the time).

Eventually I became "too cool" for balloons and preferred to set my own agenda for my birthday which came to include clubs, bars, and parties. While this phase of my life was lots of fun, I soon recognized this to be a hazard because it meant that my "special" day came to depend completely on the inclusion or willing participation of other people. After enough disappointments, I decided to always make my day special, even if it only included me, because it is the only day that I have to celebrate myself and I didn't need anyone else to do that for me.

So for many years on my birthday, I would simply disappear. No parties. No clubs. If you found me, I would be at a spa getting a massage, at a restaurant having a cocktail, or in a park reading a book. It would be just me -- enjoying myself.

But then someone came along who MADE ME let them make me feel special. And every year, despite my insistence otherwise, he reminds me that I don't have to make my happiness by myself, but that he is there to make and share happiness with me. And despite that fact that I tell him every year, I don't think he will ever know just how much I appreciate that mere effort that he puts forth to make me feel special and to show me how much he loves me.

We are far from rich, in fact our student loans probably will outweight our assets for the next 50 years...nevertheless, every year on my special day in May he makes me feel like a million bucks. And though he is not perfect, he is perfect me for and that is the best gift I could ever have asked for.