How do I celebrate my birthday?...let me count the days...

I have a running gag with my friend Twyla that my birthday is on February 30 each year. She actually believed that at one point (for a few minutes at least). I often try to put that date on the intrusive web sites that won't let you enter until you give them your birth date. Sometimes it works...

And, of course, the obvious question is "why?" I'm not sure when this started, although it was certainly in place by the time I was an undergraduate at UCLA. Because my family has always been small (just my parents and I growing up), we started celebrating birthdays whenever it was convenient. The actual birth day became less and less important. It became more and more important that we could celebrate together, rather than making a big deal about it having to be on a certain day.

Part of this comes from the fact that my mother (and therefore us, as a family) was the only one of her siblings to move away from Sacramento. In my generation, I was the first, and for the longest time the only, one of my maternal cousins to move away from the town in which we grew up. I lived in Canada for 10 years during my life as an academic. Combine that with the fact that when you play music for a living and/or work in a church you don't have weekends off, and my schedule has always seemed to be the most difficult one to work around.

So my birthday became whenever I was together with family. After a while, so did Christmas. The "worst" year, I think, was the one in which Lura and I exchanged presents in mid April at a restaurant in Pleasanton because we were both on the way to someplace else, and it had gotten ridiculous, and we decided that we needed to celebrate Christmas before our next birthdays.

As a result, I often have spent my actual birthday more or less alone, and I've gotten used to the idea. Perhaps the best example of that was the year I celebrated my birthday at Expo in Vancouver. Nobody knew who I was (except the Sounds Alive people I was on tour with), and nobody (including SA, as I remember) knew it was my birthday. I had a great time. I never knowingly schedule anything on my birthday (I doubt that will be the case in 2011). It has become one of the two days a year that I try to take time to just do some thinking about life, the universe, and everything. Because of when it is, my birthday has become a kind of mid-year evaluation day to see how I'm doing with my one new year's resolution, and other things I decided to do at the end-of-year evaluation.

But, as you know if you are reading this, 2011 is going to be different...by design. I'm looking forward to celebrating my birthday with people, and I hope you'll be able to attend. I'm going to try to get the save the date postcards out within the next week or so. If you don't think I have your correct snail address, send me an email or leave a comment so that I can get it to you.