Happy Birthday To Me!

Notes and Reflections on my Birthday

Image of a Grown Ass Woman | Nina Chanel Abney (on a good day)

I’ve been away from the page for these last few weeks, and it’s felt good.  My next few Tiny Violences’ posts will be about Rest, Conspiracy Theories and recognizing some of the incredible people in my life. Thank you for sticking around and hopefully you’re ready to jump back into our Wednesday night rhythm, I know I’m with it and excited.

But today, I’m here to start off the second week of September with: Me!  It’s my birthday, Bad Bitch Contest I’m in FIRST PLACE.  Go shawty! Happy Birthday to me! And all the other birthday songs.

The shadow period of this year’s Mercury retrograde has been cast on to Virgo season, and it’s made for a time of some serious reflection.  I knew this, and so I prepared.  In an article I wrote for Detour in July, I wrote briefly about how my international travel during that time was impacted by the celestial happening. Delays, cancellations, and big language barriers added texture to my trip, not tension like it may have usually.  Since then, I’ve learned to appreciate the collective energy of the time and to toss my expectations to the wayside.  This latter revelation has offered me freedom this year to just relax into my birthday. 

In the year since my last birthday, I have completed all my coursework and my written thesis requirement for my highfalutin creative writing MFA.  I started the program two years ago on my birthday, and it’s not lost on me the importance of this milestone.  A MF’n MFA. It’s kind of of a big deal.  After graduating from a now defunct creative arts college, I never in a million years thought I would be going back to school – let alone be facing eligibility for having “mastered,” anything. For this I must acknowledge my courage and determination. I think I should write about this at some point.  I am still scrubbing off and examining the insidious consequence of attending a PWI: the white gaze.  Living in this world, in this body, I haven’t been able to wholly avoid it, but it’s twisted and bent my writing practice since my time started at school.  I’m working my way back into a creative posture that isn’t just in response to its harm. And still, my fingers happily tap out my ideas, and my wrist cramps with excitement on the page.

Last year, I rented an NYC tour bus and gathered about 40 homies to tour the island of Manhattan; the borough that raised me.  It was such a fun and exciting experience, and I’m so grateful for my boo for coordinating all the logistics, after I shared my wish with her. The wind against my skin, the flutter of the fuchsia ruffles from my taffeta top and the smiles on my loved one’s faces brought me a memory I hope to carry through this lifetime of mine.  This year though, I’ve done things differently. 

My 10-day getaway to Martha’s Vineyard preceded my actual b-day and it was filled with beach days.  This is probably about the best gift a woman like me can have.  This year, I didn’t want to plan a thing – and it worked out because any plans I may have had were going to be canceled because Mercury has another strategy in store. I don’t know so much about astrology or astronomy, but I know enough about some of the signs in my chart not to fuck around during this time, I am ruled by this planet (among other things). So, this birthday season I’m choosing ease. And dancing.

Yesterday, my nail appointment was cancelled, because the power went out in the building where my friend who does my nails runs her suite.  My intuition told me this was going to happen. So, I sparked my joint, drove to my apartment, and picked out clothes and hair to play dress up for the day. I decided I was going to have a soft day, one where I fought as little as possible with myself. I found parking. I shopped my wardrobe. I bought a green juice and ate it with an empanada. I smoked weed, a lot.  I danced in the mirror and didn’t even pretend to clean up the mess. My toes stepping lightly over shoe boxes and shoes on the hardwood of my floors. Then I came back to our light filled lil house upstate and chilled, and day drank and ate snacks and watched some of my favorite shows online.  This birthday, I’m just learning to take it easy. I’m going to dinner, and then a concert to dance with my boo and my friends.  And I have some traditions that I want to bring sharper into focus.  

One birthday tradition that I enjoy is speaking with my mother. Usually, Ms. Thing calls me at dawn, signaling the hour of my birth.  I love it, but often I’m asleep. This time, I called her – the day before. Driving down the Palisades towards Harlem I imagined her voice.   I haven’t seen my mother in like a month (which is long for us because we’re homegirls too), so talking on the phone is the medicine I need for my tender heart that is shrouded in sarcasm. 

“You were still in my belly right now…we were watching Dracula together, I was eating grapes.” This is the way she answered my call.

I think, this is why I love horror films.

My mother was due September first, but me, I’ve been arriving late since birth.  As my mother’s due date passed, she told me (at her mother’s advice) she walked outside under the full moon, in a very hot September summer – hoping for labor pains.  They wouldn’t come until the wee hours of the eighth. My big sister was with neighbors, and my father was several miles away with his family in long island.  My mother was alone when she was about to deliver. 

“I took a shower, did my make up, and my hair…”

Another important detail that would influence how I present before leaving home. Even in the chaos look your best. I guess she waited for my father to return before they went to the hospital. 

My gender was unknown then, I’ve been a queer activist since gestation. So, my baby coochie was a surprise to my parents (who I think wanted a son but were ok with me).  My name – the story is still a lil murky but somehow, I ended up with very cool initials.

What I LOVE about this tradition I share with my mother, which I believe she also shares with her first born – is that the story of my birth is always a little different each year.

My mother has confronted some harsh truths about the reality of her life around the time of my birth and this informed her tone this time.  She no longer edited out my (formerly estranged and now deceased) father.  There was an ease to her pragmatisms when she recounted the events leading to my birth, suggesting the environment I was conceived in. She described my father in a way that revealed him in his complexity, his youth, his potential for harm, the love of his family and his selfishness.  This was new and appreciated. 

As I gripped the leather steering wheel, I drove and listened, I felt fully in my body.  This act, the telling of my birth – remined me that I was desired, that someone I cared for so deeply wanted me here and that she facilitated my being born despite all the circumstances that might do otherwise.

Mommie also mentioned that in the days following my birth there was a huge hurricane that blew over New York City – and that she bundled me up and took me to the east river to “watch,” it.  I cackled, there’s an innocence to my mother’s imagination that I’m proud to have inherited, one that would bring her and her newborn, and her 10-year-old, and her husband to the water to see the sky and the sea meet and come together to ravage the land.

My father never remembered my birthday, not in all the decades we shared living on this planet.  There were years in my girlhood when I normalized the sinking feeling of his absence – often feigning happiness reading a birthday card addressed from him in my mother’s handwriting.  A shame really.  It wasn’t until after he died, in conversation with one of his sisters, that I learned that his mother’s birthday was the day after mine.  Though I have no memories of her, I am told I resemble my paternal grandmother, that she loved me a lot – and this brings me a good deal of ancestral power.

This year I am hoping to tap into the abilities I have inherited from my ancestors, though whose blood is in my veins, those who I claim by name, and those who have kept me out of trouble and have protected me.  As the sun pierces through the clouds dancing off of these Hudson Valley mountains ushering in my morning, I have such a clear appreciation for my agency. This was something my therapist reminded me off when I went into detail about my struggle with my internalized fatphobia.  I have not only the ability to change my mind, but I also have to some extent the ability to take up space and change my circumstances.  I’m so happy to be writing, with some sense of authority on this day, my birthday, because it is something I believed for so long I could not do -that no one would care.  I’ll keep acknowledging my amazement until I’m no longer surprised.

My wishes for this year are to: write more than I ever have, and to be proud in this new praxis.  To find the beauty in discipline (because I have yet to find the pleasure and I need to examine and write about that). To fight the impulse to care for or hold space for harmful, annoying, ugly (in the inside) people, no more friend-to-opp stuff.  There are many things I want from this year, but I’ve gained so much so far, knowing, and believing my worth is one of the best gifts to wake up to today.  A real one is celebrating today!

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Go ahead and wish me a happy birthday in the comments, then share this as a birthday present for me and if you’re feeling GENEROUS you can Cashapp me $JettyCash or Venmo me @Jet-Toomer or you can send me some good vibes emojis 💜💜💜.