Written after 6.08. A series of birthdays, starting with Lorelai's 21st.
April 1989 Part I
The photograph that Mia had taken on Lorelai's 21st birthday was so dominated by four-year-old Rory that it could have been a picture of the child's birthday celebration instead of her mother's. Twenty-one candles in a pan of warm brownies on the kitchen counter at the Independence Inn. Mia and the other maids applauded as both Gilmore girls blew out the candles together, their blue eyes lit by the flickering flames.
"Don't forget to make a wish, Mommy!"
"Why don't you do the honors, babe."
"Really?"
"Wish away!"
Mia gave Lorelai the night off and shooed her off to the potting shed where she built a fort on the tiny porch and had a sleepover with her daughter. It was the first warm night of the season and they nestled down in a bed of quilts. Rory gazed dreamily at the string of white Christmas lights that Mia had given her to use for the holidays and then told her to keep. They were draped all along the railing, surrounding the girls with their soft glow.
"Like a fairy home," Rory whispered, awe in her big eyes. "It feels like we're way high up in a tree."
"Maybe we are," Lorelai whispered back.
She lay awake until midnight, watching the stars above her and stroking Rory's silky hair, spread out beside her on the pillow, thinking about the party at the Gilmore mansion that she wasn't missing because it wasn't happening and she wouldn't have wanted it anyway. Sure, she considered herself a connoisseur of puffed pastry hours devours, but it was so much better to eat homemade tater tots and pigs-in-blankets in a faux-feathered tiara rather than salmon puffs in a real one. Real tiaras were uncomfortably heavy. The paper crown that Rory had made for her during arts and crafts hour at pre-school glittered with sequins.
This was enough, she knew, rolling toward Rory and pulling her sleeping daughter into the curve of her body, tucking her droopy limbs in so she could cuddle her close. Certainly not the fanfare she would have once imagined for herself. She'd never expected the day of her 21st birthday to be so very much like the day before her 21st birthday and the day after her 21st birthday. She had woken up, gotten Rory off to pre-school, bussed tables after breakfast, dusted and polished in the library and piano room, picked Rory up from pre-school, shared lunch with her daughter and played Go Fish before starting in on the linens and bed making…
But all this had been punctuated with extra kisses from Rory, a card from the overnight staff, delivered on a breakfast tray brought all the way out to the potting shed, flowers from the grounds guys, and finally, the birthday dinner, made to order, and a gift from Mia, a new copy of the latest Bangles album (she'd worn out her tape after five months of non-stop Eternal Flame) and a 24-pack of AA batteries, enough to last her through the summer in the Walkman she wore when tackled the bathrooms after check out. Every pocket change tip had felt like a birthday bonus and The Birthday Song sounded like it had been composed just for her. She felt, for the first time in many years, like a birthday girl, like this was her day and not just an excuse for a party at which she was expected to perform, not celebrate.
Most unusual, of course, was the gift that had arrived by messenger during the mid-morning tea service.
"L, Your father presented me with these on my twenty-first birthday, just before we were engaged, and I have always intended to give them to you in honor of the same occasion. Emily." Her father had added a note after her mother's embossed signature: "It was lovely to see you at Easter. Bring Rory to visit again soon. RG." It was a nice note, she told her reflection as she stood before the lighted mirror in one of the bathrooms upstairs.
She had closed the door and locked it before she allowed herself to lift the strand of pearls from the velvet pillow and lift her own hair from the back of her neck to try them on. She stared at herself for a moment, startled to see a grown-up staring back. A grown-up who went to Yale, or Smith maybe; who played the piano and went to cocktail parties where the bartenders knew 'her drink' but never looked her in the eye. But she had never read the instruction book that came with a borrowed sewing machine. She had never talked down a used car salesman or signed herself up for a yoga class. She had never hung a flowered curtain around a bathtub to keep cool drafts off her daughter's wet skin.
With trembling hands, Lorelai unfastened the necklace and snapped the satin jewelry box shut. She leaned forward toward the mirror, watching herself again as she caught her breath. This woman knew what it was like to be on her own. She had delivered a baby… Lorelai had hummed as she finished wiping down the sink and left the bathroom with the jewelry box tucked inside her bucket of cleaning supplies.
A spark of special occasion was all that she needed. After all, it was her own spark that had gotten her and Rory through these last few years in one piece. This birthday was a momentous occasion disguised as just-another-day, rather than the other way around. And, as Lorelai had learned soon after absconding from her parents' house and striking out on her own, just-another-day was nothing to sneeze at.