tomorrow is my 30th birthday

I used to be little and now I am big

I am that most embarrassing of things: an adult who is obsessed with her birthday. I tend to throw 2-3 events to celebrate it every year — don't worry, I am not the type of monster who requires that her friends attend all of them, there is an etiquette to these things — in part because I love attention, in part because I dig bringing groups of people together, and in part because it's usually one of the first nice-ish days of spring and there's a sense of relief that we can all finally go out and Do Things.

This year, the year I turn 30, I was going to have a big cozy house party. I was going to batch a cocktail (a thing I've never thought to do before) and put out a lot of cheese (a thing I do even when it is just me). I had picked the day (next Saturday) and the time (7pm, so people would come at 8, so I could kick them out by midnight and watch a Miyazaki movie). I was gearing up to send the invitations (email, not Facebook, because we're all grownups now) and then of course everything happened, and now feeling disappointed about a not-even-planned-enough-to-be-canceled party feels like the sloppiest, most selfish emotion I could possibly dream up in the face of global catastrophe.

But I am disappointed. I can't help it. I've been excited to turn 30, the same way I'm excited when I hit a nice even level in whatever game I happen to be playing. Look, that kind of number says, I've arrived, I've accomplished something measurable, where before I used to be less. 

Of course I will still be 30, regardless of whatever marks it. The whole point here is to stay home now so that there will be many more birthdays, for me and for everyone else. It's just that I don't think it will feel quite real until I've had too much to drink in a crowd of people I love, smushing together choir friends and work friends and friends I don't even remember where they came from because the layers of the city have all long ago melded into one another. I like my life, the scope and shape of it. I miss it a lot right now.

Tomorrow I am going to make myself an ice cream pie — a recipe my mom has been making since before I was born, clipped from the pages of the Boston Globe when she started dating my dad. Brendan braved Fairway to buy four pounds of pork shoulder even though we are only two of us, and I am going to knit more of a sweater and play Breath of the Wild and call the people I love, and feel lucky to have another year.

P.S. If you're celebrating your birthday in quarantine, or throwing a party for your kid or parents or something, I'd love to hear how you did it!