How to Have the Best Birthday EVER During a Quarantine

In my heart, I was dreading it. I knew my birthday would happen under quarantine, and I just knew it would be, shall we say, less than stellar. 

Or at least, that’s what I anticipated.

I kept giving myself pep talks in the week before my birthday: “Come on! What do you expect? It’s QUARANTINE!” and “Seriously? You’re a woman-of-a-certain-age. Birthdays shouldn’t be a big deal anymore.” and “Get over yourself! This isn’t about you!”

(That last one really did run through my mind. A mantra I have taken maybe just a little too much to heart, since birthdays are the one day that actually IS about the birthday person.) 

So when I woke up last Monday to a text from a dear friend, I smiled and thought, “Well, at least she remembered.” 

But then my nose picked up the scent of freshly made coffee (not unusual as my husband generally gets up before me and makes the coffee) . . . and . . . something else. Something baking. Something delicious. 

I got out of bed, threw on my ratty white robe (the one with the makeup stains on the collar because I keep forgetting to wash it), and headed downstairs to what I was sure was going to be the most disappointing day ever. 

Streamers and balloons festooned the kitchen. Brian and Julia greeted me with warm smiles and a huge “Happy birthday!” Hugs all around. 

And breakfast. My college senior had gotten up early to make me breakfast. That, in itself, was a gift. 

Soon, our doorbell rang, and when I opened it (yes, in my ratty bathrobe) I found a gift from a sweet friend. Later in the day, another gift arrived. And then another. It was crazy! Throughout the morning, I fielded calls and texts from people I love. 

“Hmmmm,” I thought. “Maybe this day isn’t going to be so bad.”

Later, I texted a friend to see if she’d want to go for a walk. The skies were blue and the sun was shining, so why not? And because nobody is going anywhere, she had nothing else to do, so we went. We ended up spending another hour just chatting outside because, again, nobody is going anywhere or has anything else to do. 

Shortly after she left, another friend stopped by with a gift, and we ended up chatting outside for a while too. 

By now, the day had flown and I was overwhelmed that so many people had remembered my birthday. We enjoyed a delicious dinner of pizza, salad, and a Portillos chocolate cake. I opened presents, and got ready for a Zoom call with the rest of the family.

But first, Julia said she had one more gift for me. She led me to the family room, turned on the TV, did a little something on my computer, and soon I saw her face on the screen.

“Hey Mom. Happy birthday,” she said, “I know that today might be a little weird and not exactly what you would expect. In an ideal situation, I know you’d want to spend your day surrounded by your friends and family (other than just me and Dad!), but because of obvious reasons, that’s not completely possible right now. But that didn’t stop all of your friends and family, all the people who care about you, from celebrating you and wanting to make you feel special today.” 

By now, I was crying. My people had sent video clips to Julia and she had put together a montage of birthday greetings from all the people I love. And for the full thirteen minutes of the video, I cried and cried. Tears of joy. Tears of gratitude. Tears of sadness and longing for the people I’m missing so much these days.

I’m even crying as I write this!

As I think back on my birthday that I thought was going to be the worst ever, I am humbled and so grateful, because my expectations weren’t met at all. I expected the worst, but I got the best.

I’ve thought about this quite a bit since last week, and I think one of the reasons it turned out so well was because of quarantine.

I think one of my love languages is spontaneity. I’ve always loved just getting in the car and driving without a destination. On vacation, I like to leave days open to just see what happens. I love to wander city streets and see where my feet take me. Being spontaneous is a delicious freedom that I don’t often get to indulge in.

During this time of stay-at-home, we have no appointments, no schedule, and few expectations. Yes, we have meetings and work to do, but we have to admit that our schedules are freed up to be more spontaneous than in the past. We can say yes to that walk or drop off a gift to a friend. We can make plans on the spur-of-the-moment (outside and social-distantly appropriate plans only). We can spend time with people we really care about instead of those we feel obligated to.

Yesterday I walked with a friend and we talked about this gift of time that we’ve been given, and we both agreed that there are some things about quarantine that we hope won’t change. We hope our schedules don’t go back to being jam-packed all the time. We hope we’ve learned a thing or two about overload. We hope we can free up our schedules enough to be more spontaneous once in a while.

And here’s one more thing I learned from my birthday this year: if you want one amazing, glorious, special, pinch-me kind of day on your birthday, surround yourself with the most amazing, glorious, special, pinch-me-I-can’t-believe-they’re-MINE kind of people all year long.

Thanks, my people. You really are the best. Quarantine or not.