"How old are you today?" That is the first question I received after waking up this morning from my sister who strangely enough made herself "visible" online, just today.I don't usually celebrate birthdays, not even with my family. When I was a kid, I only had a few birthday parties. The last one I had was when I turned 10. Since then, most of my birthdays I had to spend away. I mean away from my homecity and sometimes away my family. It was either I was traveling or when I have already moved away from home. There were times that I had to sit for examinations on my birthday during college time. Last year I was in Argentina and spent the whole day shopping by myself.
Birthdays to me is not so much a big deal. It just marks a year older and hopefully it also reflects you are wiser. It also means that you now have to increase the number/digit in any form you are required to fill up for the age column.
Although I tried to keep my birthday thing as low as possible, there are still people who remember to send me birthday well-wishes. My mother is the first one. Well, if anyone suffered hours in pain before delivering a cute baby out on this day "X" number of years ago, it is rather difficult not to remember this day. So thanks mom and of course dad (although he doesn't remember our birthdays) for bringing me into this world. My siblings, except my little brother always remember my birthday, albeit some tend to be more creative such as the sister who asked me, "How old are you today?" this morning. Then all these years, my best friend's greeting messages always arrive punctually regardless of where I was geographically. I could recall when I turned 15, after coming home from a trip, I found a card with my name written sitting on the table of my parents' house. I looked at it. It was from my best friend. She wrote me a lengthy letter illustrating how her end-of-year vacation was. The letter was accompanied with a birthday card and a handmade praying mantis hair clip. I never used the clip but I have kept it in my "goodies" drawer since then. However, this year I was surprised to get an email from an old college mate, whom I was not that close with yet still keep in touch (like emailing once or twice per year). Funny how she could not spell my name properly but she remembered my birthday correctly! Seriously I felt really touched about it, especially her birthday, which I later on recalled, was actually a month ago but I did not remember to drop her a line wishing her "Happy Birthday".
This year, as usual, I kept my birthday pretty low key. But this year is really different from the rest of the 26 times of my birthday. You must be wondering how different it could be. Hmmm, well, I received a surprise birthday gift from my Travel Companion. Surprise number one. "What is it?" You must be asking. "Flowers". Double surprise, sort of. SinceI know he really made an effort to give me this surprise, hence a triple surprise.
So how did I answer my witty sister this morning regarding how old I turned today? Well, I'm not going to tell you. But if you're good enough to pick up hints, you could easily do the Math.
♥ every page of my imagination
