Helplessly Twenty-Seven

As a specific rule, I hate birthdays.

Specific in that I don’t hate the birthdays of my family members … Friends who throw elaborate parties in swanky dive bars downtown … Gatherings where I’m required by social law to kiss my 86 year-old “Gampy” … I’ll even feel twinges of joy reading about the ornate celebrations thrown by celebrities featured in US Weekly and am ashamed to admit that I’ve experienced the occasional tear-up when that over-privileged adolescent’s daddy finally buys her the Hummer she’s so deserving of on MTV’s “My Super Sweet Sixteen” … No, my hatred for birthdays is specific to my birthday. It shows up annually on February 10th … and for the last fourteen years has been met with a familiar pit in my stomach, impassioned tears, and the desire to stay in bed, blinds closed, catching up on some B-list TV show I never watched when it was actually on air, until February 11th rears it’s most welcome head.

This abhorrence for my “special” day has perplexed even the most avid of social anthropologists, considering my predisposition toward attention. What they fail to realize is that I like to earn my position of noteworthiness. If I don’t have it, I didn’t deserve it. I realize this peculiarity affects other aspects of my life, for example;  sneaking out of my high school graduation party without saying goodbye to my guests, refusing to walk in the ceremony or acknowledge my collegiate commencement on any level, if I ever have a wedding day, we can all rest assured the most “magical day” of my life will be a complete and total nightmare, and I’ve only begun to contemplate what I’m going to do about my funeral. Therefore, the thought of having people forced to celebrate me, my life … my ability to survive the last 365 days … my talent for growing one year older, makes me want to curl up in a ball and slowly die.

Not literally.

But still.

It all began on my 12th … evidently not my lucky number. I was in an classically unattractive and awkward stage of life, I had the “Influenza” which left me flushed by fever, coughing, and the proud proprietor of a constant stream of snot dripping from my nose. To top it all off, my sister, who had been battling cancer for the last 8 years was forced to leave our Bellingham home that day with my parents in tow to pursue an experimental treatment that would end up taking her life just a few months later. Needless to say, the memory didn’t bode well for creating new, happier ones in the following years.

It is a fact that it greatly troubles my mother to see me cry on my birthdays … Not only does my negatively charged emotional approach to my “special day” bring her an enormous deal of grief, but coupled with the financial strain in my older years of constantly adding a Coach bag or a new pair of designer denim (I hope you’re not reading this Dad) to my already completed birthday list in order to ease the pain and make me smile, has made that day in early February a parental nightmare.

February 10, 2009 was especially disastrous. Carol Schuette, fueled by worthy aspiration to manufacture happiness on my first birthday away from home (I was in Montana, and yes, I was turning 26 … I don’t want to talk about it) had gone on a pre-emptive strike to make sure that my turning twenty-six was as delightfully memorable as possible … She hired friends to come to Montana and entertain me, (thanks, Annie) had given Greer the recipe for my favorite macaroni and cheese, and my favorite flowers were delivered to my bedroom alongside an artisan Americano with an inch of steamed non-fat milk upon my awakening. She had coached all who surrounded me to overwhelm me with as much adoration as humanly possible, all in an attempt to avoid the liquid sunshine that had historically tended to unattractively pour from my overworked ducts on that given day. What she had failed to take into account was the fact that, based on terrible timing, she was forced to disclose to me that her cancer had returned, just two days prior.

Needless to say, a tear-free February 10, 2009 was not in the cards.

Fast forward to 2010: three weeks ago, I had the ultimate privilege of celebrating my birth alongside people who love me the best … My family and I frolicked on the islands of the San Juans, partaking in animated conversations, crackers, sharp cheddar, salami, and cheap wine. Later with friends, we consumed the “best pizza in Seattle” according to Sunset magazine, which proved as delightful as promised. Throughout the day, I was surrounded by many festively wrapped gifts (one of my favorite things in life) and finished it all off, tear-free at my favorite bar, blowing out 27 candles, surrounded by my friends, and my family who have proved themselves more remarkable than I can rightfully put into words.

Earlier that brilliant day, I sat with my dad on Orcas Island, staring out at the ocean when he turned and asked, “Is this where you expected to be at 27 … like during childhood, or back when you were in high school? When you were 21? Is this what you expected? All you imagined it to be?”

I turned to him. “No. It’s better.”

And it is. Since February 10, 2010, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around describing my 27th year here on earth. All that has occurred since that memorably painful day in February of 2009. Since the summer, when I’ve been asked for a sum of last 12 months, my answer has been vague; “It was a learning experience.” A broad and indefinite response at best that typically quenched the public’s need to dig any further into a year in which I felt that I, personally, had become something of a lost cause. In reality, I’d avoided processing the last 365 days for fear that in doing so, I would see the truth of heartbreak staring back at me in indelible ink. The series of events that somehow left me drowning in a pool of self-doubt, the reality of an impossible loneliness in Montana, the uncertainty of short-lived unemployment, the unsettledness found when one lives in 6 residences in one year, the grief of cancer once again hitting my family way too close to home, the truth of personal hardship, realized.

In attempting to process my 27th birthday, I’ve avoided looking back on pictures or what I expected to be tear-stained journal entries and have therefore, been at a total loss for words. (Rare, I know) I tried blaming everything for my writers block, including, but not limited to relationships that existed in my life apart from true reconciliation. So I spent a week searching for forgiveness, found it.

And still, was at a loss for words.

Perhaps my 27th birthday, like others before it, would be forced to go unprocessed and unacknowledged.

Then a few days ago, I was with Havianna, who was celebrating her 100th day post bone marrow transplant, a day that marks the beginning of a hopefully permanent remission from the cancer that had done it’s best to take her out just months ago. She spent the morning in my lap and together, we reminisced. Reading her old blogs, (Yes, she’s a six-year-old with a blog) looking at pictures, watching videos of life in the hospital, and listening to podcasts she had created attempting to illustrate to the general public an existence impossible to rightfully explain.

We laughed. I cried. And when all was said and done, she turned her little bald head and looked up at me.

“We’re lucky, you know.”

“Why, Havi? Why are we lucky?”

“Because we know. And no matter how hard life seems to be, there was a time when it was harder.”

Ah, perspective. I kissed her head and seconds later we were moving onto things she deemed more important … Like Polly Pockets.

But in that moment, with her divine clarity, she gave me the bravery to look back. What I had been missing was perspective. In light of my 12th year, my 26th was a breeze. I was one of the lucky ones … I knew.

I went home that night and fearlessly dusted off my external hard-drive and loaded up “26′s” photo archive, I grabbed the journals off my headboard that had been incessantly taunting me for the last 3 weeks and began reading.

And what I found, was quite different than what I expected.

Of course some entries were painful to look back on; Relationships gone awry, evenings of hyperventilation due to emotional distress, and demonstrative contracts with God surrounding my mom’s illness and my perceived failure at life. But mostly what I found was brilliant, this year had indeed left it’s indelible mark on my life, one of being inexplicably overjoyed and helplessly overloved.

I saw myself fall head-over-heels in love with 30 kids from Montana. I watched more than 10 incredible East/West road trips solidifying for life, relationships with my best friends. As it turned out, much of my time in Montana was filled to the brim with love, laughter, visitors, americanos, hikes, sunshine, and remarkable conversations shared over a glass of wine. During the summer, I had the opportunity to again become completely enamored with another group of individuals, my extraordinary work crew kids at Malibu, people and an experience I will never forget. Short-lived unemployment in Bellingham left me available to spend long days with my sister, laugh for hours at my brother, two of the most brilliant people on the planet, and have remarkable life discussions with my dad. There were trips to Swedish with Carol, literally hundreds of hours, where my mother seemed to morph before my eyes into one of my best friends. Unexpectedly, I watched as the Schuette Family yet again walked out of the impossible, stronger and more in love with one another than before. Looking back, my 26th year on earth became one defined by this love, relationships, ab-toning laughter, colorful photographs canvassed by genuine smiles, travel, Havianna, life-altering summits, my brilliant family, and while sometimes painfully honest, a plausible relationship with Jesus, where he again seemed to defy gravity, ignoring my selfishness and contracts, and faithfully brought me back to a place of peace that passes understanding.

As she always seems to be, Havianna was right. Because I know, I am in fact, one of the lucky ones. And after 3 weeks on a sometimes fanatical journey of reflection, I knew what I needed write about. Not a step-by-step guide on how to survive your birthday, not a commentary on how impossible the last 14 have seemed, rather, a narrative on my year; what I’ve learned, where I’ve been, and who I am because of it.

Was my 26th year what I expected?

Absolutely not.

It was better.

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