Well, the day started out ordinarily enough if you don’t look at life in big picture ways. The morning found me hopping about between phone and Facebook (there, I said it) messages and email and praying (okay, so that’s a little strong) for birthday cards (I am a sad, sorry thing, yes I know) and anticipating a lovely dinner with Mike and Stephan following a busy day of deadline copy editing.
But first things first.
I had changed the cat litter the night before, but had forgotten to sprinkle some of that sweet-smelling Arm & Hammer deodorizer into the (six...count them) litter pans. And really, when you try and imagine (if you have to) what not sprinkling deodorizer into six litter plans can mean...well, you take my point.
Typically, I prance about the house in comfy shoes that accommodate my back troubles, but yesterday (even a prancing, girthy girl wants to look pretty on her 37th birthday) I had on my favourite brown, look-like-smooth-riding-cowgirl leather shoes. (Sorry, cows.)
I was in a bit of a hurry because the oatmeal pot was boiling away on the stove (well, the pot wasn’t boiling; the water for the oatmeal was), and I didn’t look down at the basement floor as I went about my business (plugging my nose against the cats, who had evidently gone about theirs.)
Now, I have never been a ballplayer like my mother and daughter, but I discovered soon enough what sliding into third must feel like. And were it not for Sneakers’ own girth (31 pounds, which is hefty for a feline, especially when you consider his short legs, which, on an average day, are barely visible) I might have escaped unscathed, but Sneakies is a little bit challenged, generally giving up on the paw-over-the-litter-pan effort before he’s really even begun.
So there I was, now standing in the kitchen with soft chocolate-coloured remnants all over the bottom of one of my good shoes, trying to wipe it away with a moistened paper towel – the pot now having boiled dry and the smoke detector firing.
Eventually, I got out of the house and down to the streetcar stop where I stood under my yellow umbrella (the sky not raining enough to be deemed Shakespearean, but everything wet nonetheless), watching a diligent pair of pigeons who were building their nest in the eaves of a variety store that never seems to open until midday, if it opens at all.
As I turned my back on the birds, I felt a large plop on the top of the umbrella. I have no idea if I had offended the pigeons by looking away, but really, all I was doing was checking for the – any – streetcar, given that one had not come by for at least twenty minutes.
Shaking the deposit from my unhappy umbrella, I stood back from the birds and searched for Mary’s (the one I had borrowed) transit pass, wondering – given that it really is true that things come in threes – what would be next. After all, I was about to board a streetcar where typically a person doesn’t find too many rush-hours animals, and it did seem that animals and their deposits were also in the forecast.
I could see from a distance that the streetcar was leaning on one side, although I already knew from the half-hour wait that the car would be full. Indeed, it seemed that everyone in east end Toronto was heading downtown. (I was secretly hoping that the passengers were setting off on a pilgrimmage, hoping to add weight to an anti-Rob Ford rally, when it occurred to me that if any of these people were travelling in from Scarborough, they were the idiots who had voted him in. Oh, sorry. But yesterday was my birthday, not today, and today I don’t have to be nice.)
So onto the vehicle I trudged, cramming my way toward the rear, past backpacks and duffel bags and oversized purses, landing smack against the backdoor railing. The place was frighteningly full.
From out of the swell, I heard the voice of a child – a sweet voice with a resonant tone; a happy voice, pleased to be coming from the seated position of a stroller (I knew this from the trajectory), away from the glares of the angry, impatient population.
I looked around. I looked down. Finally, I saw her, a mere two feet from where I was standing.
She looked up at me, all 30 inches and pounds of her, no more than three years of age, blue-eyed, dark-haired, dressed in head-to-toe pink, lively and engaged and engaging, her accompanying mother no more than sixteen. She (the child, not mother) smiled up at me as if we had met before – as if we were friends, in fact – and she opened her mouth to sing:
“Happy birthday to you...happy birthday to you...happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to you.”
She looked right into my eyes, knowingly, twinklingly, and I looked right back into hers, and I said, “Thank you, sweet girl. Today is my birthday, and you have sung for me a beautiful song.”
The people around me gasped. One woman said, “Really? How wonderful!” and another cried out, “Oh, to be serenaded in this way on your birthday.”
I had to agree. I had to be pleased. I had to wonder if Don was at work, or at play...reminding me once again (everything happens in threes still lingering in my head) that superstitions aren’t real; that love is.
Anyway, the day turned out to be lovely. The rain eventually stopped, and the editing got done. Dinner was terrific, and when I eventually made my way home I found that I had received dozens (well, maybe not dozens, but that’s what it felt like) of warm-hearted messages from family and friends.
Later, basking in the semi-glow of my birthday and just before drifting off to sleep -- the cats all around me (Sneakers was sipping a celebratory brandy and smoking a Cuban cigar – ooph!) -- I thought of that dear little girl, and of Sarah, and of my mother and Don. And I don’t know all of the reasons why because in some ways this doesn't make sense, but I said to myself, “Third time’s the charm.”
And what became of the umbrella you ask? I threw it away.
