Today is my 21st birthday. I'm at Biola University for summer school right now, which means I'm again spending my birthday away from home. I really should be used to it by now though. I've spent my birthdays away from home almost every year since I was eleven. I went to Awana Scholarship camp every summer, and it always fell on the last week of June. At the time, I kind of like it. Having my birthday at camp meant spending my special day with a lot of my friends (about 300 of them, actually). I'd grown up with these kids, and was used to not only seeing them during the summer for camp, but also throughout the school year for other Awana events. This made having my birthday away from home pretty nice!
One major damper surrounding this happy setup, though, was my knowing how much my parents were sad not to be with me on those days. Eleven years old was a young age for me to start depriving my parents of their right to share in my birthday celebrations. I feel that even now. I've deprived my parents of exactly half of my life's birthdays, and my only excuses are camp and summer school.
Maybe I'm just being sentimental. Either way though, I hope I can one day make it up to my parents. For now though, I'm going to be happy knowing that as long as I'm happy on this day, they will be happy too. I know this to be true because I heard that happiness in my momma's voice on the phone this morning.
Personally, I don't find birthdays to be the big deal that my parents were both raised to believe they are, but that's alright. As long as they feel birthdays are important, I will too.
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