Birthdays are curious times. When we are young they mean a year more till this or that is in our reach and when we are older, it's a reminder that we are one year further from a dreamy childhood. Yet we celebrate them, sometimes just as a cause for a party. It's a rather enjoyable practice and can have good meaning and symbolism about the miracle of life, but we don't usually think like this as the day passes. It's just a day and another party with little traditions of its own that vary from person to person. Among the oddly little customs that accompany this celebration, is the ceremony of making a wish while blowing out the birthday candles. Everyone knows this is a futile gesture. There's also the idea of how disturbing it may be to think of eating cake that children have sputtered profusely over, but we seemed to find it entertaining and cling to it as a tradition. As for me, I like tradition and always made a wish on my birthday growing up. I usually wish for small or clever things that I have a good idea will come true in the future, but my eighteenth birthday was a little different.
I sat at our old oval table in the kitchen, happily anticipating the chocolate fudge dessert I had chosen as tradition as my "cake." My mother laid the glass pan on the table in front of me and lit the few candles. There were just five because my mother had forgotten, as usual, to go to the store and get more. My brothers were hopping around the kitchen taking pictures with my own camera. Soon my dad started us in singing happy birthday, which of course ended up too low and thoroughly off-key. When they finished, I put up with another picture and sat with a silly smile on my face. I had to come up with something to wish, despite my youngest brother's calls to hurry lest the candles melt all over the dessert. Having just watched Pride and Prejudice with friends in an early birthday party the night before, an ideal wish popped into my head just in time. I quickly took a great breath and blew harshly from side to side across the candles. On most birthdays, it takes more than one breath, but this time I got it all in one and heartily congratulated myself. I replayed my wish in my head. I'd gone a little overboard, perhaps, but I was eighteen. The wish: To have a classic Jane Austin style romance. I was always a firm romanticist in the best sort of way and believed profoundly that I would fall deeply in love in the far distant future, the wish was more of ajoke and I liked the idea of it. For once, though I didn't end up talking about what I wished and just kept the little dream inside, where superstitious people might think it safe.
After we ate the desert, I opened presents and was very delighted to see that, along with a new camera card and other things, I received the top thing on my list. It was a boxed set all Austin's completed works. Recently, I'd been collecting books for Christmas and Birthdays. It had started the Christmas a year before when I received one of my favorite books, The Scarlet Pimpernel. I was excited with these books to add to my collection and the birthday celebration that year was particularly enjoyable.
When all was done, my parents went to bed and the older of my brothers put in Gillagan's Island, which we would probably stay up watching for some time. I loved staying up late, but instead of watching the TV with them, I opened Sense and Sensibility and poured over its pages, content to just lie on the couch wrapped in my snow-flake micro-plush throw and read. Reading late at night unfortunately can have a drowsy effect on people, especially when in a very comfortable position. It was not long until I had slipped off to sleep with intertwined thoughts of Darcy, Elizabeth and Colonel Brandon, with no expectations of what I might find awaiting me when I next woke up.