It is an irony, if that word applies, that so much energy is poured into the first birthday and yet it is the one none of us can personally remember. There are loads of old, yellowed photos and the makeup of these photos varies little from home to home. There will be the baby in a high chair, mangled cake on the tray before him or her and two pudgy baby fists smearing icing and – usually chocolate – cake all over the his or her face. My first birthday would follow this custom but the excitement of the event had lost some of its luster being baby number five with one’s mother only a couple of months away from delivering baby number six.
My first birthday would consist of the standard cake, a half-hearted version of happy birthday, sung over the din of my brother and his friends watching TV in the next room, my father yelling at him to keep quiet and my oldest sister trying to teach me how to blow out a candle, and me, utterly fascinated by the little flame attached to the top blue and white spiral candle. So intrigued by the flame that I, more moth-like than is safe for a one year old, keep reaching for it rather than attempt to blow it out in a salivary baby spray. After a few attempts to grab the flame the candle is blown out for me and removed. As for mangling the cake, I’ve little interest and the photos from that day show me, as is now the custom, looking distracted with my hand, obviously placed, on the candle-less cake in front of me.
A year has passed since I was born. Two days hence John and Yoko will get married in Gibraltar and in Charlemange, Quebec, a one year old Celine Dion is mangling her first cake and wondering how she will overcome the crushing weight of being sibling number 14 at the bottom of her familial totem.
It has been a fact of my life that while I am often unable to remember what I had for dinner last night I can tell you of each and every song I enjoyed through most of my 38 years. Clearly, it would be impossible for me to recall the songs I heard while I was, for instance, 5 months old, but there are family stories that predate my own personal recollections that are all somehow connected to a song. Not too much later my own memories are forged: earliest memory, first day of school, death of a loved one, loosing ones virginity, college, breakups and everything big and small set to a soundtrack either unwittingly or by choice. The songs we loved and the songs we hated all find their way into the framework of one’s life.
I have decided to recap my life in story and music. Month by month and year by year and eventually, after hundreds of posts I will have caught up to the present and also caught up to myself. Besides, if you don't tell your own story, who will?
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