Saturday, 06 August 2011
Today we attended my nephew’s birthday party.
Before the party, I told Owen it seems like he’d been to a lot of birthday parties this year. He said he has been to eight, so I counted them up and he’s exactly correct (assuming he did not count his own, since you don’t really ‘get invited’ to your own party). Counting his own party, he’s been to nine, so his cousin Asa’s party today makes number ten. And, we noted, we even had to cancel our plans to go to one party due to sickness.
Today’s party was very nice. A small affair (eleven people in attendance including the guest of honor). Lots of food. Good cake.
It just so happens that last week, my wife’s brother and his wife became parents to child #2, so Isla, Asa, and this new baby all have birthdays within 12 days of each other. Maybe, in the future, the three of them will share a birthday party together. The longer I am not a Witness, the more baffling it is to me that Witnesses can so completely ignore their children’s birthdays.
I mean, technically, most of them don’t ignore them, but they’re taught to downplay them to a drastic extent. My brother-in-law and his wife, for example (the ones who just had another baby), use their wedding anniversary as an excuse to shower their older daughter with gifts and a fun day. I’ve known other Witnesses who did this, too, and it’s just plain stupid. They’re simply trying to get around what they know is a silly rule. When I was growing up, my mom said ‘happy birthday’ to me every year, in a silly-sounding voice that let me know she wasn’t really wishing me happy birthday – ’cause that would be bad – she was simply acknowledging that it was the anniversary of my birth (’cause, you know, that’s so much different). My grandfather, in what I assert is the shittiest birthday gift any grandparent can give their grandchild, called me every year on my birthday and shared a scripture with me.
Now that I’m not a Witness, my grandfather doesn’t bother calling me on my birthday (big loss) and my mom performs linguistic gymnastics to acknowledge birthdays without letting on that, technically, she’s sinning against her religion. On Isla’s birthday, for example, she sent me and email with “Happy Day” for the subject line and she called Owen the day after his birthday to let him know she was sending him a gift ‘because she was thinking about him lately.”
The other day, someone once again asked me why Witnesses don’t celebrate birthdays. I said, “They don’t do it because they are told not to do it.” And that’s really all there is to it. If the Watchtower Society announced tomorrow that they’ve reinterpreted the scriptures and now they feel that birthdays are acceptable, all the Witnesses would clap for joy and nod to each other as if this is the most logical development in the world and isn’t it great how their religion is always refining the truth?
Sunday, 07 August 2011
Speaking of that missed birthday party, today we met up with some friends and lunched at Aristo’s restaurant in Stillwater. Owen gave his friend the birthday present that had been sitting by our front door for nearly two months. The service was verrrry slow, but the food was scrumptious – I ordered some tilapia on pita bread. This is a combination of food I’d never enjoyed before, but now I’m determine to masticate such comestibles again.
In the evening, my mom came over. She’s in town once again and she plans to stay at our house the next two nights. Owen hogged most of her attention, which was just fine by Jennifer and me, as it let us get a few other things done.
Our home isn’t exactly in top form for having house-guests right now. We are awash in boxes: about a quarter of our belongings are packed up, and there are many empty boxes sitting around waiting to be filled. In the meantime, they’re taking up lots of space. On the one hand, I hate moving, on the other hand, I don’t like it either. I will be glad when we’ve relocated to our new place and we can trip over boxes there.