My Birthday Dinner (38)

I have thought of my blog often since I last posted, considering and dismissing, selecting and even forgetting the topics I wanted to write about. But I am bemused by how much time has elapsed. Ah, well. Welcome, I think, to 2011.

This post should have been number one in my list of 52. I was new to these new things, though, and no doubt at the time I thought this didn't count, that a birthday celebration, however elaborate and lovely, was not a "new" thing. Since then my definition has expanded, and as I search for ways to bring my blog current yet again, this event feels glaring in its omission.

The day I turned 52, my Auntie Christel gave me a birthday dinner. I was a new vegetarian, and she set to work in earnest, preparing a lavish feast fit for the gods. Or in this case, for the goddesses. She made a carrot soufflé that was both pretty and divine, and countless other creations, all beautifully presented with flowers and glowing glassware and sparkling china. I know there was a dish of baked tubers and onions, and a crispy crinkly convection I thought was made from sesame seeds but wasn't. I remember the new exotic foods kept coming and coming, and I was pleased and humbled by her efforts.

Before, we gathered on the patio, my presents and blooming plants arrayed nearby. There was basil and delphinium from Tante Helga and lavender from Auntie Gardi and tiny white flowers in a green glass planter from Mami. But what I was most struck by was my chance to be there with my elders, these four German women of the generation before me. The evening seemed symbolic, the meaning still a mystery to me. I only know they have fed me and shaped me, these sturdy German women, three of them immigrants, and now we were gathered together for the first time, for maybe the only time, and in my honor. A night fit for the goddesses, indeed. It makes me without words, grateful and quiet.