Presents = Love

My 38th birthday is Tuesday and all I can think is, Big F'ing Deal. Birthdays are heralded as special days but in reality I didn't do anything magnanimous, except get yanked from a womb I'll spend the rest of my life trying to work my way back into (Holla Freud fans). But this year more than any other I feel less like celebrating the day Mom pushed extra hard so she could expel the one thing keeping her from boozing, the only reason she refused to breastfeed me. The day after having me, her breasts turned into taps. Although if what they say is true, that whatever Mom ingested would be passed through the breast milk, Mom was coughing up coffee brandy with a nicotine chaser.
It's a far cry from my tenth, the year Mom threw a party and invited all my friends. (Well, she invited my 1st grade class, hardly friends since I was a recluse). But they came and I was the man of the hour. My 'friends' gathered around the race car cake my mother made, a tribute to how much she paid attention, since I've never once alluded to being a fan of racing. To her credit she abstained from drinking, or at least curtailed it enough to avoid flipping out when we decided to re-wrap the cat in one of my present boxes.
I received a myriad of gifts but ultimately hunched over my Lego collection after I assimilated the small box Mikey Newhall gave me into the collective. Mikey took awkwardness to a new level. The type that could calculate Force=Mass x Acceleration in his head but had trouble zipping up or fastening his belt after taking a whiz. I piled my presents high, thirteen in all, and sat back to take in what they represented: Presents=Love.