Graphic by Raychan
Right before my 11th birthday, I read Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Eleven.” Nearly 10 years later, I still think about the opening paragraph and the idea that each year rolls around inside of you like “pennies in a tin band-aid box.” With varying degrees of success, I might even be able to recite the first sentence from that story on cue: “What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one.”
I love birthdays. Even, odd, milestone or not — the more, the merrier! I subscribe to the school of thought that believes in candles and the extended version of the “Happy Birthday” song. Tell me it’s your birthday, and I will truly wish you a happy birthday from the bottom of my heart. Each age, each penny in the “tin band-aid box,” is worth celebrating. Birthdays are special.
I especially love my birthday, March 13. Being born on the 13th is great insurance that you will grow up to not only defy superstition but you will also embrace it. You look Friday the 13ths right in the eye and say, “You don’t scare me,” before blowing out your birthday candles. You spend each year associating 13 with parties, cakes and songs. You chide the architects who purposefully omit the 13th floor from blueprints. Those born on the 13th can see through the superstition of an “unlucky” number.
In the ebb and flow of the mainstream, certain phrases go through waves of relevance. Right now, it seems like everyone throws out some variation of Walt Whitman’s “I contain multitudes” line. I hope it doesn’t veer into the cliche, but I too contain multitudes as do you as does March 13. It’s taken me years to truly understand this, though.
At nine years old, a birthday represented unadulterated joy. Even if it fell on Friday the 13.
On Friday, March 13, 2009, I had the best of both worlds: I could celebrate my birthday with friends at school and stay up late because Spring Break laid sprawled out before me. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. I sported my pink corduroy pants with pastel beads sewn along the side seams and wore a white shirt with a felt-lettered “SASSY” across the chest. I likely stared at this assemblage and thought, “Now this is a birthday suit.” I relished in blowing out the birthday candle in Ms. Rozzell’s class that afternoon, watching “The Last Mimzy,” and setting the table with St. Patrick’s Day motifs. My grandparents — nicknamed Sassy and Pop — came for dinner and watched as I opened my gifts. Two Taylor Swift CDs, a basketball hoop, a locket and a number 13 charm. I insisted on playing Swift’s debut album for my guests and reading the lyrics from the CD booklet to my grandfather, explaining to the Texan patriarch that this was real country music.
That locket sits inside my jewelry box today, tarnishing gracefully. The basketball hoop is long gone, along with my basketball aspirations, and has since been replaced with a far taller hoop for my brothers. I’m not sure where those CDs are, but they started a birthday tradition of mine. Every year, I try to build a soundtrack to commemorate my birthday. My ninth birthday was Taylor Swift, of course. Thirteen was Ellie Goulding and, oddly enough, Celtic Thunder. Sixteen was the Rolling Stones and Vance Joy. But my 17th was all about trumpets.
On March 13, 2017, my family and I were in Savannah, Georgia. This was one of those glorious years where my birthday coincided with Spring Break. I played Chet Baker’s “Tangerine” and Chuck Mangione’s “Land of Make Believe” back-to-back that morning before adding “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” and “The 13th” by The Cure to the queue.
It’s baffling. I remember the songs I listened to that morning, but I can’t remember when or how I learned that my grandfather died that day. I just remember holding the phone, crying, as my grandmother told me, “March 13th will always be special, remember that.” I probably blinked. Special?
We went through the motions of a vacation and a birthday that day. Savannah is a beautiful city with plenty of historical sites and whimsical shops, but I recommend visiting while you aren’t grieving. I wonder how many people can say that they’ve sobbed inside a Lilly Pulitzer store. Visualize it now — chartreuse walls and all. The employees in their neon print smocked sundresses gawked at me, offering a consolation water bottle. People aren’t supposed to cry in Lilly Pulitzer. There’s no protocol for that. At dinner, I blew out the candles and cried some more.
The news shattered me like broken glass, or, in the spirit of superstition, a broken mirror. I went to bed, thinking, “From now on, March 13 is the anniversary of my grandfather’s death, and it will be an awful day. What’s special about that?” And then, I admitted to myself, “This is what ‘unlucky number 13’ must mean.”
Leaving my grandfather’s funeral puffy-eyed and drained, I sat in the car and listened to my voicemails. There was a number from New York. I played the message out loud, and everyone in the car heard the same thing I did: My short play would be produced off-Broadway in a play festival that spring. I weeped. The tears came from a place of both loss and glee. My grandfather may not have been there for the news, but he would have been over the moon that the little girl who insisted on offering her critical analysis of Taylor Swift’s lyrics would have her own words performed.
During the drive home from the funeral, I understood what my grandmother meant when she said that March 13 would still be special. You can be heartbroken and joyful all at once, and that’s what makes life all the richer! A birthday can be bittersweet! This is what growing up is supposed to be.
On March 13, 2020, I had another Friday the 13th birthday. The soundtrack for this birthday began with carefully-selected Alan Jackson and The Cure songs. (“Friday I’m in Love” for a Friday the 13th birthday, of course.) Niall Horan released a new album as what I assume was his birthday present to me. Soundtrack aside, the birthday was fairly unusual. My university recently delayed school for two weeks as COVID-19 cases rose across the country, but we were expected back on campus by the end of the month. Later that evening, however, I received an email, stating that the rest of the semester would be online. My 20th birthday quickly skidded into a blur of frantic texts, calls and Google searches.
March 13, 2020 is the day most people associate with the beginning of this pandemic era. COVID-19 cases rose and exploded, and more insidious societal diseases like racism were simultaneously exposed with the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. A presidential election, inauguration and insurrection later, this year has been exhaustive; and we’re all exhausted.
In an online class this month, someone unmuted their mic to point out that we’re approaching the one-year anniversary. My friend typed into the chat, “Lucky number 13.” As I read the comment, I could hear the sarcasm in his voice. Building off the comment, the group reduced this past year’s events to a slew of bad luck.
I’ll spare you the retelling of the obstacles I’ve hurdled this year because I know you have your own. This doesn’t diminish either of our struggles, it’s simply the way things are right now. Despite this, I know I am so lucky. I am so lucky for the opportunity to spend time with my family, to have a place to go, to see another year. Underneath the trauma of this past year, we’ve all done a lot of growing up since March 13, 2020, and growing up is a bittersweet process. Sometimes it tastes more bitter than sweet. But that’s the thing with multitudes — they’re a whole lot of things at once.
My 21st birthday is 13 days away, and I feel the ache of so many different growing pangs. Perhaps it’s the different ages I’ve accumulated, though. They rattle inside me, bewildered by the changes of a new year. These ages, those “pennies” Sandra Cisneros described, are multitudes. We contain multitudes, and each year, we add to the multitudes and laugh at the power we gave last year’s superstitions. Nothing is one-dimensional or single-faceted. Not even lucky number 13.