This Never Happened...(part I)

This never happened! It was all a dream!

I went to bed and I was 29. I woke up…in a different world!

No, it has nothing to do with age. It’s got all to do with love!

What do they call that feeling that time has shifted and you are in the same reality, but as a completely new person. Almost as if you watch yourself and your actions and experiences from the side and really appreciate them.

2:45am: After a couple of tequila shots I staggered into bed. John was good enough to treat me some beautiful Patron silver for my 30th. There is an eerie feeling of romance in my head when I think of tequila shots. I believe it has something to do with me and Alka getting drunk out of our minds at “Mucho” in my hometown, where an old house had been gutted and you could be on the third floor and send a bucket with some money in it down a rope to the bar, and the bartender rolled you back the shots. 30cents each! So, I believe we had a total of about 30 shots between the two of us and barely staggered outside, to find ourselves laughing at the picture of a shadow of a peeing Mexican with a huge sombrero, painted on the outside wall of the bar. The sandwiches and headache were a tremendous postscriptum to that memorial event.

8:45am: Bam! Buddah barked! (a balloon blew up) I woke up with a headache again, unwilling to open my bloodshot eyes yet. Then a melody sounded and echoed in my ears…”Happy Birthday to youuu…” A vision walked in. This sexy gorgeous girl, dressed in the skinny black dress I got her for my birthday. (I hadn’t planned on giving it to her until after I got my super-duper secret present, because of which I wasn’t supposed to open drawers, cupboards, wardrobes, not even my own e-mail for like weeks! The little mouse digs thoroughly to find a piece of cheese. I’ve had a mouse at home for the past…9 years) I was happy to see her so beautiful and bursting with excitement, but this sudden thought froze my mind: “What if she bought the same dress for herself?”…I didn’t have much time to linger on that thought, because before I knew it, I was dragged into a different world.

The first thing I saw: a huge bunch of balloons right in front of the room. As they scattered, I looked at the dining table, set up with this gorgeous breakfast of crapes with chocolate, berries and whiped cream. I allowed myself to rest my eyes on the table, then on her. She was shining with this ethereal happiness and excitement that immediately infected me and made me forget all about my headache and the dress issue. “Come on, look over there!”

I couldn’t believe it! The whole couch was COVERED with presents of all shapes and sizes! “There’s thirty of them!” the mouse exclaimed! That’s when I felt my biggest present! The love! The love she put into all of this. Every little detail! All the presents wrapped my favorite way - you have to tear the paper off, not just pull it out of a gift bag!

The breakfast getting cold, I was opening awesome present after another. There were no pens, pins and pen-sharpeners! It was all serious business! Colognes, shirts, shoes, hats, books, DVD’s, an AWESOME watch, earrings, chains…amazing, amazing, amazing!

I paused halfway through to ask about the dress. Her morning started at 5am. She cooked breakfast and went to the store to get and blow 30 balloons, then she had to struggle with sticking them into her little car and drive with them flying all over the place! She cooked in the GARAGE!, so she wouldn’t wake me up! I had left the dress in a gift box on the washer, so she found it and wondered how I had known that she’d cook breakfast in the garage?!? “Of course I didn’t! That’s why I left it there!” …she loved it!

I opened and opened gifts for ninety minutes. At the same time the phone was ringing, Skype was using up all the laptop resources, but I had to open everything before the excitement killed both of us.

And just as I thought we were done, Sami gave me a card! The back said: “Happy Birthday, daddy, I love you! Will you teach me how to skate?” The front had a picture of him, holding a vintage skateboard I had dreamed of when I was a kid. Tears filled my eyes when I looked at my wonderful family and the cute, ingenious way my Ali thought of, to give me my 31st and biggest present, which she had struggled for a long time to find. An original Tony Hawk, Powell Peralta board from the mid 80’s! A masterpiece! But what made it even better was an imprint of Sami’s little hand on the wrapping paper.

It’s like the whole universe shrank, or I expanded into this blissful happiness where everything was filled with love and finally felt in sync.

Alex has this theory that I’ve never heard anywhere else, that thirty days before your birthday you fall into this “Saturn hole”, which is like the shittiest time of the year for you. I believe “UrAnus hole” is a more appropriate name. As much as I don’t believe in this stuff, the last thirty days WERE the hardest in my life and some day when I summon enough courage, I’ll write about that too, but today it felt like the curse was lifted and I had control again!