Helen's Birthday

November 4, 19??

On the other hand, their friends “the greyheads” as Dad affectionately calls them, kept their loose lips zipped tight about the party itself. They didn’t say a word about it when they bowled, went out for early-bird dinners, and drove each other to the airport to visit children “up north” like me. I couldn’t keep as quiet though. I wanted to bait the big fish.

“Mom,” I teased her on the phone before I left home in Michigan to fly down to Florida, “I’ll give you a call on Tuesday morning to wish you ‘Happy Birthday’ . I surreptitiously relished my tantalizing secret though-on Tuesday morning I knew I’d actually be sleeping in my parent’s guest bedroom. Now if we could just keep this mum from an accomplished armchair detective with a super-perceptive woman’s radar.

I disguised myself with Groucho Marx eyeglasses and mustache, hired a stealth bomber, and flew into West Palm airport incognito. Immediately, I was rushed off to party central in Boca Raton by my brother, niece and nephews. With two days to go, we shopped and cleaned. We hung green and pink streamers in the living room and rented a huge metal punch bowl that lit up and continually pumped out through four spigots. It was silly and gaudy and tacky. I loved it.

On Sunday night, I was dressed up and gleefully mixing citrus juices with soda in the punch fountain when I became dimly aware that the guests were arriving. The next time I looked up, the room was filled with gray haired, balding men and pretty, lipsticked ladies in their 70s. “Come in and say hello” one beckoned. There were just a few familiar faces for me, but I shook everyone’s hand, feeling like a guest of honor myself. “Oy Gut,” one woman said, “is your mother going to be surprised when she sees you!” So many of the women seemed sweet, animated, Jewish and stylish, just like my Mom.

The phone rang. Panic! It could be my mother calling. “SHHHHH,” my sister-in-law called out before she picked it up. Laughs and small talk silenced. It was Dad, saying they’d be there in ten minutes. The chat was back on.

The next time my brother shot us the prearranged signal to quiet, we knew this was not a drill. The expectation was wonderful as we could hear but not see my Mom being greeted at the door, then walking into the room. In one voice, at one moment, forty people yelled “Surprise!” Mom’s jaw dropped, she stared at the group, and she was so shocked that she started to walk out! My brother led her back in and then someone urged me forward. Up to then, I had been standing in back of a tall guy because I didn’t want to be the big surprise. “Debbie” Mom screamed loudly when she saw me, wonderfully uninhibited in her delight. She hugged me and squeezed me tight. With everyone watching, I felt a bit embarrassed, a bit too important. “Go around and greet your guests” I whispered in her ear as I hugged her back.

Sinatra music wafted from my brother’s patio as the lovely elderly couples foxtrotted and munched on hor d’ ourves and cookies

At 9:00, we toasted Mom.

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“I couldn’t have picked a better mother in law”, said my sister-in law.	“You’re a grandmom who gives us too many presents, but that’s OK,” my niece and nephew said.	“I think my Mom could run my household better than me,” I admitted and everyone laughed, believing that it was true.

My gregarious Mom was loving the limelight. She stood in the center of a group in her colorful silk dress, smiling as everyone was talking to her. Who knows how many fun birthday parties Mom threw for my brother and I? We can’t really repay her, but we were trying, and it felt great.

Near the end of the evening I paraded out a big birthday cake with just one candle-in the shape of a question mark. Her friends pointed and laughed at it. “You really have those kids brainwashed, Helen,” one said.

Why do women hate to tell their age? Is it vanity? Or superstition, that once you talk about one birthday, you might not be around to talk about the next ? Perhaps they don’t know themselves. I came up with another theory that night, as I watched Mom’s guests looking at the old photo albums we had tricked Mom into bringing. They held black and white photos from when she and Dad were engaged and first married in 1946. The pictures were neatly fastened onto black pages with photo corners and lovingly annotated with a white ink pen. In them, Mom and Dad were young and healthy, beautiful and handsome, clearly in love. Their hair was dark and thick. They could lay and hug on a blanket at a park and not worry about whether it would be difficult to get up again.

Their friends sat with the albums on their laps, pouring over the pictures. They seemed to enjoy looking at them as much as Mom did. That, in the end, was why I realized she didn’t want to tell her age. Sure, it was an inside joke. But it wasn’t so much that Mom didn’t want her friends to know how old she was, as that she just didn’t want to be that age. Why call herself older when she didn’t want to be older? Especially because, as she tells me, she doesn’t feel older in her mind.

I got the joke. Mom wants her age to be a symbol that can’t be pronounced, kind of like the new name for the rock star formerly known as Prince. She likes the mystery. She likes the joke, but mostly, I think, she likes the denial. This way, she can pick her own number and be, as she feels inside, forever young. --Debbie Eisenberg Merion 11/97