“Imagine that one day you accidentally knock a treasured vase off its perch. It smashes into tiny pieces. What do you do? Do you try to put the vase back together as it was? Do you collect the pieces and drop them in the rubbish, as the vase is a total loss? Or do you pick up the beautiful colored pieces and use them to make something new – such as a colorful mosaic?”
For the last few years, I’ve celebrated the day of my birthday sans company.
Of all the plans and assumed trajectories for my life that I’ve given up on or allowed to die, this leftover idea has been the most peculiar. Puzzling because at no point has this scenario ever been close to a reality, so I do not know why it still occasionally tugs at my heart.
A significant other, so enraptured by my existence that the day of my birth, to them, should be an event.
Full-disclosure: I have not had a get together orchestrated by another living human since I was five years old. I have never been surprised. I tend to gravitate towards the type of men that consider no holiday worth getting worked up over, including their own birthdays. More years than I’d care to mention birthdays were celebrated with a mutual cancelling out of the responsibilities associated with being a significant other whose mate had a born day. To make things sound even more ridiculous, I’m not a giant fan of parties.
And yet still.
It is not to say I have not had some rollicking birthday celebrations; a favorite being a four-day romp that included a spa day, a beach day, a dinner and two brunch parties. Events all orchestrated by me; which often left me breathless and happy, but tired in a way you should not be on a set of days dedicated to you.
So at some point I decided doing whatever I wanted instead trumped being an event planner and host, and simply turned off my phone and walked outside on my birthday. Usually whatever I wanted involved food, so this approach evolved to an annual food adventure where I’d throw a dart at a tasting menu, hand them my card, tell them it was my birthday and worry about the bill later. If you consider my IG account you’d understand how quickly this became my most treasured way to celebrate anything.
And yet. Still.
While making my way in life to the eventual point where this blog was born I’ve formed an e-circle of writing friends of whom I affectionately refer to as “Ladies, Interrupted”; having each experienced an event that abruptly, devastatingly, killed off the trajectory of life we imagined and left us to make sense of the life we were now given. I’ve had many a conversation on the subject of rebirth with Rae of Untitled, 1975 (an aptly named blog born of the ashes of another), where we share a joint interest in the concept of kintsugi, which she beautifully details in “The Art of Mending Broken Things”. While inspiring I’ve found the concept never truly spoke to me. There are aspects of my life, once broken, that are impossible to be remade whole in the image of what was, gold fillings or not.
Which is how I came across the mosaic. Specifically, this piece from Mari Andrew (yes, we do indeed have the same name).
While there is beauty in the cracks some dreams are just shattered beyond repair. And there is something wonderfully healing in simply allowing it to remain forever broken and creating a completely new life out of it, something even lovelier than you had imagined the first time. This is the space I occupy. A mosaic allows you to simultaneously mourn that forever broken and celebrate the new life that came together from the bits.
Which brings us back to my birthday celebration. An elaborate event orchestrated by a loved one, platonic or otherwise, is something that is just not a realistic possibility in this lifetime (yes, I still have years to live. No, I have no interest in doing that to myself). I can’t even tell you why I wanted it in the first place, so I definitely cannot explain why this really insignificant thing in the grand scale of all that has got-damned happened and not happened in my life still occasionally stings. But allowing myself to acknowledge it, mourn, and also really fucking enjoy (and quite likely prefer) the traditions I have created instead just..it just brings me peace.
Now I have ranted about the need to make your own traditions that are not “consolation prize” versions of the traditions you wanted to make before, but never really delved into the “why”. Because I love to make series (I should really call them novellas because of the way I abandon them after three seasons), the discussions surrounding will be labelled “mosaic”. Let’s make some beauty of the bits, shall we?
What about you? What beautiful new life emerged from something you let completely fall apart or die?
My Table For One 