My fortieth birthday was the last Saturday, the ninth day of our ten day residency.  I was not thrilled it would take place when I was some nine hundred fifty miles from my wife.  Nothing to be done about it, though, because she was taking a preparation class for her RN exam (which she later passed on the first try) and could not come up to join me.

The sky was delightfully clear that morning, after several days of clouds and rain, and it cheered me greatly.  I did nothing to call attention to the personal significance of the day.  But somehow the other students knew.

At the end of the last class of the day, just before dinner, they sang me a happy birthday and presented me with a thoroughly signed card and a “cake” consisting of two Hostess snowballs, stacked, with a candle shaped like the number one.

My wife, however, had plans of her own.  Without telling me, she had called the Captain Whidbey Inn and arranged for the restaurant to have a birthday cake for me at dinner that night.  When the restaurant staff came out with the cake and candles, singing happy birthday, they all joined in to sing it once more, with a marvelous counterpoint thrown in by my Fiction Workshop professor, Kathleen.  At the end of the line, “Happy birthday, dear Stefon,” she chimed with a perfectly timed and pitched “Again!”

I took some teasing about the dual celebration, but everyone was grateful to share the tasty chocolate cake.

The evening finished for me at an impromptu last night party that was declared to be in my honor, as birthday boy.  There was even Champaign.  Rounding out the experience I gave my final Capoeira demonstration of the residency (I may write about the others later): a tipsy, yet fairly steady performance of the movement that we call aú and that most Americans call a cartwheel.

It wasn’t the birthday I would have planned for myself, but I’m glad it’s the birthday I had.  And I still have that candle shaped like the number one.

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