Remembering My Most Memorable Birthday...

Today I am responding to this request: “Describe one of your most memorable birthdays.”

I only remember one of my 76 birthdays!!! At first I was thinking about childhood birthdays and knew that I only remembered that one of those could be called memorable. Then I expanded my thinking to my adult years with the result being that I do not have memorable memories of any of my 76 birthdays other than the year of my fourth birthday.

There are probably some reasons I don't remember anything memorable about my birthdays. The first thing is that my birthday is December 7th. Since that is right before Christmas, it doesn't come at a very suitable time for celebration with gifts, travel or parties and my parents had never heard of the idea of half birthdays.  Another thing is that money was very tight during my childhood.  In my memory is the response from my mother whenever I would ask for something during my childhood.  She would tell me, "We can't afford that." I have no idea how many times I asked for something that couldn't be afforded, but it must have happened at least once. From then on, that became my expectation so I think there were no birthday presents for any family member nor were any presents expected during my childhood. My mother did usually make an angel food cake and frost it with 7-minute frosting for each of our birthdays. Sometimes there would be whipped cream for frosting.  There were also candles and singing of the Happy Birthday song before the cake was served. But there were no gifts or parties; no meal in a restaurant.

As an adult, there are things that I have learned about myself that reveal why I don't have memorable memories of my adult birthdays. Two things factor into this. The first is probably that  "We can't afford it!" - the childhood response from Mom when asking for something a bit out of the normal needs of life still applies. The other factor is that I am not comfortable with attention being brought to myself. I hate it when there is an announcement in a large gathering that it is my birthday so let's all sing and celebrate!!! I want as little drama as possible surrounding me personally. So I am quite happy that I do not have much in the "memorable birthdays" category to write about.

But what about the birthday when I was four years old? My family and I had just moved seventy-five miles from a farm near Viroqua, WI to a farm near Fountain City, WI. We had arrived on November 1, 1948.  I think our home there had a telephone on a party line with other farms in the area.  (Our house pictured in 1948 above seems to have a telephone pole in front of it.)  But there was no running water or plumbing in the house and maybe there was no electricity in the house or barn at the time. Those things would be added in the next couple of years.  (Our barn in 1948 is pictured below.  There is no electrical pole to the barn which I know was there a few years later.)

My parents apparently got a call from a neighbor who invited us to their home for an afternoon visit on December 7th. I do not think those neighbors knew ahead of time that it would be my fourth birthday that day. But it must be that after our arrival the subject of my birthday came up. Somehow this kind neighbor, Muriel Heizinger, found something to wrap and give me as a gift that day. The gift was a round plaster of paris plaque to hang on a wall. The plaque had a dramatic picture of a huge elephant on it which took up almost the whole 6 inch in diameter circle. I thought it was a really awesome gift and had it hung on my bedroom wall. I kept it for many years. Also that day, someone gave me a few coins. Both of those things would have been an extremely unusual experience for me. So that is the story of my most memorable birthday.