Ex-pat Birthdays
November 26th 2006 23:12
My birthday was the other day and i got some great presents, had a fabulous time with my friends, danced, drank, ate...
but one gift topped all the rest in creativity, and that was from my lovely and wonderful parents.
Turning 23 is a "blah" year. Its not going to be exciting like 21 was, it doesn't have that nice symetrical ring that makes 22 bearable; no, 23 is all around daunting as it approaches. So what do you gift your child for this less-than-thrilling occassion?
23 birthday cards (each with a little cash in them to get you by, of course) but 23 cards. Arriving all together, or day after day, each funny or touching, beautiful, or interesting. A message, a personal touch in each...
The hard part is picking out the perfect ones. But that's the part that most indicates you care, right? The time you spent making sure every single card was going to relate to me, to my experience.
I don't know what isn't trendy here. Sharing a relationship with family that means appreciation comes easily? Having wonderfully creative parents? Being wonderfully creative parents?
In some places in the world it is common that families end up in diaspora. Each family member travels the world, falls in love, finds work, settles down, what have you. In some places in the world holidays are for family gatherings in the "mother country" and otherwise those sharing a surname are cosmopolitan in lifestyle.
Not where I come from. Americans by and large do not send their children off to foreign countries for indeterminant periods of time. Uncommon is the American family that has one child in the UK, one child in Spain and two parents in Greece. The rest of the world experiences travel and ex-patriotism somewhat differently, I believe.
So what is the trend here? The trendy part of this story is that my parents have let me go. They liked the idea a lot when i first left, I think they like the idea less and less as I stay gone, but they never let that dictate how they interact with me. The pressure to return is because i miss them too, not because the relationship we all share suffers if I stay. They let me know that with every single one of my 23 birthday cards!
but one gift topped all the rest in creativity, and that was from my lovely and wonderful parents.
Turning 23 is a "blah" year. Its not going to be exciting like 21 was, it doesn't have that nice symetrical ring that makes 22 bearable; no, 23 is all around daunting as it approaches. So what do you gift your child for this less-than-thrilling occassion?
23 birthday cards (each with a little cash in them to get you by, of course) but 23 cards. Arriving all together, or day after day, each funny or touching, beautiful, or interesting. A message, a personal touch in each...
The hard part is picking out the perfect ones. But that's the part that most indicates you care, right? The time you spent making sure every single card was going to relate to me, to my experience.
I don't know what isn't trendy here. Sharing a relationship with family that means appreciation comes easily? Having wonderfully creative parents? Being wonderfully creative parents?
In some places in the world it is common that families end up in diaspora. Each family member travels the world, falls in love, finds work, settles down, what have you. In some places in the world holidays are for family gatherings in the "mother country" and otherwise those sharing a surname are cosmopolitan in lifestyle.
Not where I come from. Americans by and large do not send their children off to foreign countries for indeterminant periods of time. Uncommon is the American family that has one child in the UK, one child in Spain and two parents in Greece. The rest of the world experiences travel and ex-patriotism somewhat differently, I believe.
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