Birthday Blues

Tomorrow I turn 33.
I'm neither here nor there about getting older. I'm pretty much where I expected to be at this age, so the actual birthday itself is fine, I guess.

But what the birthday used to be has changed. Who knew that little things would hurt so much when they're gone.

What am I missing?

I am missing my "birthday supper" I have with my parents each year. Each year since college, my parents would take me out for supper to celebrate my birthday. More often than not, it would be a steakhouse of some sort - and even though I'm not a large connoisseur of "meat," I never cared. Last year I was blown away when I picked Italian and my dad, for the first time ever that I had witnessed, ordered spaghetti and meatballs. He wouldn't touch pasta for the first 31 years of my life, and all of a sudden here he was with his unexpected order.

What else am I missing? The story. Inevitably around my birthday the stories of Houston, my birth, mom's roses and Dad staring at baby me in the nursery thinking to himself, "Holy sh--! I have to get it together. I have a baby to take care of." And how he used to set me in my chair in the middle of his electric racetrack and I'd watch him, and me in my walker in the apartment, and "Uncle" Joey and all these things I obvisiously have no recollection of.

And that's why it's so special. I don't remember any of it, but listening to him made it seem like I was right there. And seeing that it meant so much to him, that I meant so much to him, then and now, was something I looked forward to each year.

That's what I am missing this birthday.