I'm Not Who I Used to Be

The best birthday I can remember was a long time ago. When I still lived in New York.

I was 6, maybe. Or 7. I don't know. But it'd snowed overnight, so when I woke up and looked out my window, our entire suburban street was blanketed in white.

It was early, or maybe just dark out, but my mother had snuck into my room in the night and tied mini chocolate bars to helium balloons, and scattered them across the floor of my room. They looked like a kelp forest of plastic pink ribbon and purple bubbles, bobbing gently against one another.

My family came in to wake me up. I can't remember whether or not my dad was there. I was wearing my favorite blue nightgown, the one with a plastic picture of TinkerBell on the front, and my hair was still long back then. Down to my back, all straggly and sleep-mussed. I must've been missing a few teeth too- all the old Polaroid pictures we have of that morning show me with gap-toothed, surprised grins.

We had cinnamon rolls.


We don't eat them anymore.
Cinnamon rolls, that is.



Apparently, that was a Father thing. Not a Family thing. I never knew, I liked the cinnamon rolls.
But this new years I bought a roll of Pillsbury's finest, and my mother just gave me a look.
In the end, we ate them a month later.
I felt sad, because I'd honestly liked how we'd eat cinnamon rolls on the morning of birthdays and holidays. It was one of those tastes that was ingrained into my psyche, something I came to expect and anticipate.

But tomorrow, all that's waiting for me is banana bread.

Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful bread!

But it's not cinnamon rolls.



It's not as if I miss my father, here- I just miss that tradition. I miss the sticky-sweet fingers and the laughter and the way my sister and I would squabble for the right to lick the frosting bowl.
It makes me sad to think I'll never do that again.
It makes me sad that that memory has been sealed off for me.
It makes me sad that a year ago my parents split apart, and now I will always associate my birthday, however minutely, with my parent's separation.

Thankfully, it's not as if the divorce was finalized or announced on my birthday. Nothing so official as that- but. It was the night we first fought back. It was the night we refused to be cowed by his angry looks and furrowed brows. It was the night where my mother ordered dessert first, which means a hell of a lot in this family.


So what do you do on the anniversary of a day like that?

What do you do?