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Birthday
Mid-November: Peter's birthday falls on a Sunday, and friends are coming for supper. We sleep late. For once I drift towards wakefulness like a child, aware of sleep's buoyant warmth and of waking's clarity; the two blend, gently. Peter's arm lies over my waist, his body cups mine. It's a windy, overcast day; branches of the birch tree scratch against the porch roof. I listen to the quiet of Jake's room. I wonder where he'll be at this time next year.
We linger over a birthday breakfast. I make scrambled eggs, set bread to toast on crumpled tinfoil laid on the wood stove. Jake goes out and feeds the flock of black silkies -- small hens with sweeping tails -- and throws hay onto the frozen soil for the horse and pony. He returns smelling of frost and manure. I pour the eggs into a frying pan. Peter's sitting at the table, examining his pile of gifts, eyebrows raised. We know he'll tease us by taking an intolerably long time to open each thing. Jake sits across from him.
"Open that one, Dad." He pokes a present with one finger, sending it over the edge of the table so Peter has to catch it.
Last year on Peter's birthday, Jake had to be prodded awake and was annoyed with us. This year he and his friend Corey found the perfect gift. Peter makes an elaborate show of opening it, commenting on the wrinkled used paper, trying to remember other presents it was used for, picking at the knot -- and I see how someday, before too long, he and Jake will be friends. I long for it. I'm tired of mediating, brokering disputes.
"Nice, Jake," Peter says.
"What?" I move forward to see. In the paper are enormous dried pig's ears. Dog chews. These are entirely appropriate gifts for Peter, who loves costumes, has a set of horns made of moose-antler tips, and embarrasses Jake with outrageous hats. He holds the ears to his head.
"Oh, nice, Dad."
Peter goes to the dining room where there's a mirror.
Peter and Jake are happy with each other all day. They ride their mountain bikes around the block, fifteen kilometres of dirt road through the industrial forest that spreads from our farm south and west: the woods have been recently clear-cut, or are halfway grown back, or are still dark and dense, ear-marked for harvest. I spend the morning making a birthday cake and setting the table. Then I work outside in the cold air, covering the flower gardens with hay, stacking kitchen wood in the back shed. At 3:30, when light is already draining from the sky, our friends arrive: Pete W, Judith, and their daughter, Maya. We've been family friends for years. Their son is already away at university, and Maya will leave soon. We stand in the driveway, preparing to set out for a quick walk before supper. Peter and Pete W exchange rude guy comments pertaining to age and physical capabilities. Judith is tiny, tough, sparrow-boned: she wears a black ankle-length wool coat, mittens, and a long scarf wound around her neck, covering her mouth and nose.
"Oh, Mum. You're such a baby," Maya says. She and Jake are hatless, bare-handed. They stride fast, side by side.
When they were little, Judith and I remind each other, we'd take long family hikes at Fundy Park and sometimes, by the end of the day, they'd lag behind, whining.
We go up across the fields and through the woods, circling round behind the ravine and stopping at the edge of its eighty-foot cliff to look back at our farm, toy-sized. Dusk falls as we descend through the leafless hardwoods, and we're pink-cheeked when we arrive back at the house. In the hall we unwind scarves, unlace boots. Peter carries in stove wood, and Pete W heads for the pantry, where he takes beer bottles from the refrigerator. I cook rice and, at the last minute, sear scallops in garlic butter.
At the dining-room table we banter in the way of old friends, yet even as I tease, question, exclaim, I'm wondering if everyone else feels as I do: that the largest part of myself remains hidden behind my smiling face; that my public self is an integument, wearing thin. Words I'd like to say press, quiver, and remain unspoken. I flick the ash from the wick of a guttering candle flame. We're reminding Maya of the time she mooned us, in a ski condominium in Maine.
"I never did."
"And we" -- I grin at Judith -- "changed in the parking lot."
Forty-six candles on the cake: one to grow on. The year before my grandfather died, my grandmother wished, as she blew out the candles on her birthday cake, that we would all still be together on the next birthday. Afterwards, she told this story whenever someone was presented with a birthday cake, until my mother found ways to forestall her.
Peter blows the candles. Jake and Maya are watching. They're like cats, present but poised, as if ready to spring away. We grown-ups are jolly -- joyful, silly, a merriment slightly forced-as if we're all aware of our fraying connection.
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Excerpted from Edge Seasons: A Midlife Year by Beth Powning. Copyright 2005 by Beth Powning. Excerpted by permission of Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
