This was my 4th or 5th birthday with all of my little friends. Oh, and my brother who is 18 months younger than me. He's the cute little boy on the right side edge with the curly hair. The kids were all children of family friends. I lived and breathed Sesame Street, hence the cookie monster cake. I remember the cake because it was chocolate. Even then, I didn't like chocolate cake. It's such a sweet, innocent photo. It makes me sad to know now what was going on in my life even that early.
This one is from my 16th birthday. Not your typical birthday picture. My junior prom fell on the eve of my 16th birthday with activities ending the day of. The young man I went to prom with is probably the most talented actor/singer I have ever personally known. He is still acting and singing in Chicago and I'm so proud of him. I was born at 3:27 am. He sang to me at the exact minute of my birthday. Pretty cool! I don't know many other 16 year-olds that get serenaded like that.
I'm skipping a couple years. This is from my 19th birthday. My grandma tried her best to make birthdays good for me. You have to keep in mind that my grandma was highly dysfunctional too in her own ways. However, because she wasn't directly abusive, she was a safer person for me to be around. She always made each of us a cake on our birthday. My dad always used this as another form of birthday torture. Yet, grandma always managed to get a picture of us and the cake before that would happen.
I might look happier here by design. I had just moved out of my parent's house and had already met the man who would later become my husband. You might notice something funny about the cake. Besides the fact that it is pink with green writing, it also says Happy Birthday Jo Jo. My family never called me by my first name. Mostly, they called me Jo Jo. That has stuck! Last time I saw my nieces and nephews, they still called me Aunt Jo. I was so accustomed to having to leave the cake at my grandparent's house, that I didn't eat or take this one home either...even though I lived alone. Some things stick with you a long time!
Here it is! This is the picture that I woke up thinking about. This was from my 17th birthday. Remember me saying that my dad used my grandma's cakes as a form of torture? On my 16th birthday, she had made me a chocolate cake, which my dad made me sit and eat the whole thing and making me very sick. Not wanting to live through that again, I asked my grandma to not bake a cake for my 17th. To which she begrudgingly agreed, even though she knew what happened every year. (I told you she was dysfunctional. She did things just to anger my dad.)
While grocery shopping with her...yep, that's how cool I was, spending my birthday grocery shopping with my grandma...we found this cookie. Our grocery store had just then added a bakery. It's hard to see, but there are two chocolate chip cookies, with a big scoop of pastry cream in the middle and red hots to make a face in the side of the cookie.
You might also notice the smile and hint of animation. This is probably the only picture from my childhood that shows either. I think the smile was truly because I knew I wouldn't have a cake to be tortured over. I had a treat that was mine, all mine. It's a rare gem from the giant mountain of photos I have.
This picture makes me smile when I think about it and even more when I see it. It makes me sad too. It doesn't reflect how my life really was at the time, which is probably why it makes me happy and sad. It seems to reflect a moment of my life that was how it should have been. Again...maybe that's why it's both happy and sad.
There you have it...the only good birthday memories I have from 19 and younger. The memories still plague me with sadness, knowing that the happiest of times were so few and still so full of difficulty.
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