My American friends don’t — by and large — use the phrase, but in Britain, no birthday goes unmarked without at least a half-dozen folks wishing you “Many happy returns of the day.” This may even include the postman or building receptionist if they’ve seen you often enough to know the rhythm of your life, and the bartender if he was paying attention when your friends stood you a round.
If you think about it, it’s a lovely, compact way to wish you many more years of life, and that they be as happy as the present moment, whether scoffing office-sponsored cake or watching someone else run the whip-round to get enough pounds for the exotic cocktail you suddenly fancy instead of the usual pint of Abbotts.
I’d worried my mother had run out of returns that would ever be as happy as birthdays just a few short years back. Two TIAs in 2018, and two strokes earlier in 2019, have scrambled her memory into an unpredictable Western omelet. By that I mean that while there’s always good — thank fortune, the happy memories and emotions tend to be the ones that present themselves — you can never predict whether you have a bite of mushroom or peppers or onion or plain egg.
But I’ll tell you what’s better than an omelet.
Pure, unalloyed, birthday-cake-grade happiness.
Thanks to an inspired re-gifting suggestion of my colleague, Deb, I was able to give Mom her own copy of T. S. Eliot’s Old Possums Book of Practical Cats, the little paperback edition illustrated by one of my heroes, Edward Gorey. (His Eclectic Abecedarium inspired the title of my own abecedarium.) Mom loved it, and when she realized the gift came bundled with the Christmas edition of Catster, we nearly lost her to happy enjoyment of these feline-inspired gifts.
But I think the best gift of the day was one dear Donna and John orchestrated.
In combing through Mom’s photo albums, I discovered a manila envelope containing a splendid black-and-white portrait of my father. I was delighted to discover the photo was taken during a NYSUT (New York State Union of Teachers) conference, when he was interviewed in-between sessions. The interview ran in the next edition of the union’s magazine, and some kindly subeditor sent my folks the proof of the photograph that accompanied it.
I palmed the print to Donna and John, for them to frame and give to Mom on her birthday.
At first, she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at.
I wasn’t much surprised. After all, an hour earlier she’d asked me to “call your father’s sister and tell her we can’t come over today, I’m just not up to it… and I don’t think he is either.” Considering both other parties have been dead for three or more years, I assured her I didn’t think cancelling would offend anyone concerned.
But then she gave a big smile, and held the portrait very gently to her chest. While she evidently couldn’t recall the event, she remembered perfectly that my dad was handsome, smart, someone worth interviewing, and that she loved him.
And that’s what happy returns on life are all about.