Birthday Cards

By Jia Lim

Once, I wrote a birthday poem for her forty-second. It described her love of wine, and how she was so very fine. Exceedingly satisfied at the neat rhyme and my infinite untapped potential, I awaited glowing praise.

Instead, she offered her thanks: muted, painfully cavalier.

Once, I skulked into her darkened bedroom, and hid the card for her forty-sixth under her wallet. I was too antsy, announced my fatigue too loudly, and retired for bed too early. I was proud of the vivid colors and the “happy birthday mama” outlined in shaky black lines, but I was not sure if it was enough.

She summoned me the next day, and gently but archly pointed out the jagged streaks of crayon outside the lines. I hung my head.

Some years were good. I was delighted to bring her joy.

Some years, I forgot. Or to be honest, I always remembered; but I dreaded, hesitated, agonized, and let the day pass. The swell of my love dueled with teenage angst and stubborn pride. The half-finished cards found their homes in my drawer, a palpable presence.

This year, from my first job in my new home in a new city, a twenty-four-hour flight away from home, I will distill my most uninhibited love and gratitude, my most desperate desire to please, my most vulnerable longing and emptiness and pain. I will fold it all into a handmade birthday card for her fifty-fifth. And I will feel like a child again.

 Photo "Birthday Cards Inside" provided by Selena N.B.H. via Flickr's Creative Commons licence.