Birthdays are so Passé...or Maybe Not.

I'm not sure when my birthdays ceased to be Something to be celebrated with great pomp and circumstance.
No, wait, that's not entirely true. I can make a vague estimate. It was probably somewhere around my eighteenth year, when I realized I was heading into my twenties and that, instead of being an exciting landmark (children are usually very proud when they announce all of how old they are), it was just a day to add yet another number to my age. 
Various thoughts rolled around in my head as I wandered through the day Before the 'big' day. One of them was: What's the difference between today, the day Before, and tomorrow, the day Of? Or, for that matter, the following day, the day After. Time has a funny way of presenting itself. It's not like I went suddenly from one number to the next in two days. No, much as I might wish to cling to the 'younger' age, the 'older' one has in fact been inching up, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. It shouldn't catch me by surprise.

I used to celebrate my birthdays (or, rather, they used to be celebrated for me) with big parties, colorful balloons and mounds of presents. Ironically, as the years go by, I find that we (my brothers and I) make a bigger deal  about my parents' birthdays than our own. It's a strange turn of the tables.
It's not that I don't like my 'special' day being acknowledged. I very much love and appreciate the kind wishes and the thoughts - but more for themselves than for what they commemorate, perhaps.
My birthday almost slipped by uncelebrated by me personally, this year. Despite the 'family' dinner, I still managed to half forget about it. It was a near miss, but a little  cake and a dinner at The Keg with my Beloved makes me realize that perhaps birthdays are not completely passé for me, after all.