My family and friends asked me for weeks what I wanted to do for my birthday this year, and I couldn’t figure it out. I would normally have a party with them, but this year was different because of COVID-19. A party is immediately ruled out.
Thinking about it I decided to instead do a month-long birthday celebration. My family and I gathered various coupons and birthday specials from restaurants and planned when we would order from them across the span of three weeks. We dined outdoors at one restaurant, and we ordered pick-up and take-out from others.
To navigate staying in touch with my extended family during this time, I FaceTimed them and kept in touch virtually. Similarly, since I couldn’t have a party with my friends, I had a one-on-one socially distant get-together with them. In order to ensure that I could see all my friends, I spread the get-together dates across multiple weekends, turning my birthday celebration into a birth-month bonanza.
My friends and I met up for outdoor dining at restaurants, walks, and picnics. One friend of mine gave me an LED projector as a present, and after hanging a light tan sheet on my fence to catch the projector’s display, we watched shows in my backyard while sitting beside a cozy fire burning in the fireplace. All these events were one-on-one and involved social distancing, mask-wearing, and sanitizing hand gel, of course.
These experiences turned a birthday that I was nervous to acknowledge into a celebration that made me feel really special and grateful for everyone in my life, whether I was able to see them in person or not. I was nervous because I was wondering if this birthday would even feel like a birthday at all and if it would feel like a special day, considering I couldn’t see all my family and friends at one party. But a birth-month celebration feels just as special as a party, if not more.
At my past birthday parties, I have hopped from conversation to conversation, making sure that everyone has enough food and is having a good time. However, spreading the events across the month and keeping the visits one-on-one has enabled me to deepen my friendships and connections with loved ones, and this is something that I’m not usually able to do at parties, considering I’m usually too busy hosting.
Spending such one-on-one quality time with loved ones has not only been more relaxing, but it has enabled the “quality” in “quality time” to shine. When I’m sitting with one person for several hours, we are able to have much more meaningful and powerful conversations than we would have in passing at a party. I would not normally have the opportunity to nurture these relationships in this way, and I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to do so recently.
Life is way too short to let Covid-19 thwart a celebration of surviving another year of life. Every year is inevitably always filled with both ups and downs, and I figured that I might as well take every opportunity I can to turn a “down” into an “up.” That’s exactly what I did with my birthday, and the result: Birth-month celebrations will be in my life for much longer than quarantine.