The Luxurious Journey

I am an all-in birthday girl. I LOVE my birthday. I love celebrating my birthday. I think everyone should celebrate their birthday for their entire birth month. But the birthday DAY has to be special.

Growing up, birthdays were not spectacular celebrations or reasons to travel. Birthdays were usually family in our backyard, or if it rained, in our garage. Yes, our garage. But I find as I get older, birthdays are a thing that should be celebrated grandly. Moreso, even, than when we are young.

But my birthday has become bittersweet for me. My dad died on my 39th birthday. I was pregnant with my daughter and on bedrest. I will never forget getting the call from my brother in the early morning and can still feel the depth of my sadness in that horrible moment.

It wasn’t a surprise that he was dying. He had been suffering from Parkinsons with dementia for 10 years and we knew it was imminent. But, as anyone who has lost a parent will attest, it is a heart-wrenching blow just the same.  Add to the fact that I had been confined to bedrest for 3 months, and allowed only a few medically-sanctioned trips to visit him (lying prone in the back of our SUV as my husband drove), it was a difficult time. 

I would be lying if i didn’t say that this, of course, changed how I felt about my birthday. So ever since then, I’ve tried to plan something fun around my birthday.

Some years it was as simple a visit to Six Flags with my husband and then preschooler. For my 50th, we took a magical trip to Italy, staying at my dream hotels, The Cipriani in Venice and Villa d’Este on Lake Como. 

And in between I’ve planned fun excursions to the beach, to Bermuda and Nantucket, but mostly at the Ocean House in Rhode Island. The past several years we have been lucky enough to be accompanied by some of our best friends. 

I’ve found that if I plan enough things on my birthday, I won’t focus on the deep loss of the greatest man I have ever known. A man who would have been so delighted at the life I have made for myself. A man who gave up his own dreams to work in a factory 6 days a week so that my brother and I could dream more, achieve more, live more than he did. 

Travel is my indulgent escape. It helps me focus on how fortunate I am, how beautiful life can be and how much I have to be thankful for. It’s also my homage to a man who would have loved to have done so many of these things. 

I’m turning 55 tomorrow. I honestly don’t let the number get to me because people may not know this, but I’m really only 35. Or at least that’s how I feel. And tomorrow, as I have done every year since that day, I will wake up and think of my dad. And I will know that this is his way of wishing me a happy birthday.