Growing up I was told that you were either an “upper” or a “downer.” Undiagnosed (and therefore unmedicated) depression meant I was, unfortunately, a downer for much of my teenage years. Now that I have downers in my life and, often in my home, oy... I feel terrible for my parents who were subjected to my downer energy. In an attempt to minimize the pain, I have instituted a key rule in our family: if you want to join us, be an upper and if you have to be a downer, go be by yourself. However, I also regularly try to find ways to tip downers to the upper side of the scale using the incredible combination of my years of Marketing experience and my mother’s DNA.
My mother was the most celebratory person I ever knew and it just made life more fun: we started the day with “top of the morning to you” said in mediocre Irish accents and ate corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, sang to the dogs on their birthdays and had elaborate themes for birthday parties. Memorable childhood birthdays included my “Christmas in July” party where we wore red and green and decorated ornaments and watched “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” I still have photos that haven’t aged particularly well of my “Taste of Siam” birthday when we watched “The King and I” and ate Thai food and wore culturally appropriated/vaguely Asian attire (although surely nothing we were doing as elementary school girls was nearly as offensive as Yul Brenner being cast as an Asian man in the first place).
I am a birthday person. I am the daughter of a birthday person. My mother’s birthday was one that served as a frequent password to accounts and was celebrated for multiple days. I also am someone with a summer birthday who is still bitter that she never got to have cupcakes brought to class to celebrate herself and feels like she has to make up for it in her post-school years. However, I truly do not understand why adults don’t want to celebrate more. If, as “grown-ups,” we’re not celebrating our birthdays then what does meet the cut to celebrate? Especially in “these times” when every day the news brings more depressing updates and some of us are married to people who regularly bring up the prospect of a second civil war.
I believe in making a toast whenever I get a drink, I believe in popping champagne on weeknights “just because,” and I believe in finding excuses to celebrate the people around me. I think you can take a normal evening and give it a name to rebrand it to make it seem special or add a game or contest to make anything feel like an event.
My mom loved the “put a name on someone’s back and make them guess it” game but raised the stakes one Christmas by saying you couldn’t eat until you guessed yours. Others at the dinner were Frosty and Rudolph and Mrs. Claus. My father had “Balthazar” on this back and took forever to guess it and I didn’t guess mine until I was near tears and had gotten multiple hints. I was Melchior. My mother thought it was a hoot that I didn’t know the names of the three wisemen and I thought it was cruelty that I didn’t given that she was my Sunday School teacher for many years. Any activity that prevents me from eating while setting me up to lose when I am one of the most competitive people and sorest losers of all times isn’t a recipe for me to be an upper.
My father also introduced fun and games to summer meals by starting a corncob throwing contest from our deck. What started as a way to get rid of corncobs on an island with very rigid trash rules has morphed into the actual highlight of my one son’s entire summer (no judgment on how low the bar must be) and an activity that has forced my husband to face his own mortality and weakening strength.
Events, of any kind, are great because they are cues to downers to bring their best selves to the table. Are you incentivized to be an upper when you’re just having dinner with your boring parents? No! Are you incentivized to be an upper when THERE’S A PARTY? Yes. As a result, I have created celebratory events and parties of all kinds as both a tribute to my mother and an insurance policy against the energy vampires around me.
Let’s watch “The Durrells in Corfu” and eat homemade pita… it’s a Greek party!
Let’s look up a random holiday and celebrate with associated entertainment and refreshments… it’s Cinco de Mayo/Pi Day/Winter Solstice!
Let’s not just play bocce… let’s host a bocce championship with prizing and potentially trash talk each other (although this didn’t end well or at all since I outsourced tournament organization and the whole thing became a bit excessive and it turns out I don’t like bocce that much).
Let’s take a regular meal, but make many of the components toppings or dipping sauces… it’s a Hot Dog Party! Or a Roast Chicken Experience! Or a Make Your Own Pizza Event! The last one being my least favorite because you go through all of that and the kids just make pepperoni and sausage pizza and also pizza crust and I have a very tense relationship wherein it never does what I want it to do and, as a result, I overwork it which then makes the dough even worse. And all of that so that my kids can make the same exact pizza(s) they would have ordered from takeout. Except you know what I’m bringing now? Downer energy to a PIZZA PARTY. No one wants that.
The trick with any of the above is to repeatedly correct people who try to downplay the event. Take a Hot Dog Party for an example (and thank you, Alison Roman, for the inspiration a year ago). Picture the following exchange that is adapted from my memory of a real world event.
Son: so dinner tonight is just hot dogs?
Me: no, it’s a HOT DOG PARTY
Son: but doesn’t that just mean we’re eating hot dogs for dinner?
Me: ummm, no, it sounds like you don’t really understand what a Hot Dog Party is. With that attitude, you don’t have to come
Then… I put out chips and dip and put on fun music and tell people they can come down and join us but if they don’t bring Hot Dog Party energy they have to leave. Cue: eye rolls AND more enthusiasm than the average dinner (like we go from a three out of 10 to a five but that’s progress!).
All of this is to say that parties and celebrations and events and contests achieve multiple goals. First, they briefly pep up your teenagers and get them to bring some upper energy to their otherwise downer selves. Second, they give you an opportunity to toast and recognize and celebrate the people around you… because otherwise are you just waiting for weddings and graduations and retirements to do so? Third, they help you squeeze the most possible out of every minute of life because life is finite and, according to what I read on the paper of record, there are thousands of insane ways I could be murdered or maimed at any moment.
Last week was my birthday week. And yes, I say birthday week because I’m a self-indulgent person who needs to be the center of attention Leo. I actually go away on vacation every single year for that same week entirely so that my birthday cake can be an ice cream cake from my favorite (and overpriced cash-only) ice cream parlor (or potential money laundering scheme?). This cake is very important to me; it’s peppermint stick and vanilla ice creams separated by a layer of whole Oreos with hot fudge on the side. Peppermint stick is often a seasonal flavor reserved exclusively for the month of December according to Trader Joe’s so finding some place that will serve peppermint stick ice cream in July is mission critical. This year, I learned that the true extent of the current supply chain crisis was no peppermint candy made its way to the ice cream parlor for the entire month of July and I almost had to have a mint chocolate chip ice cream cake. The fact that they got a surprise shipment of peppermint candies the morning that they had to start making my cake is obviously some kind of karmic intervention that can only be attributed to my mother.
I have had this cake almost every birthday for nearly two decades and in the past, it has been sullied when others were involved so I always order it myself. There is no better way to sound like you have no friends then to call and order a birthday cake for yourself.
The Juice Bar: What should the cake say?
Me: “Happy Birthday Karen”
The Juice Bar: And whose name should I put on the order?
Me: Ummm… Karen
The summer after my mom died, I called to order the cake, picked it up and then realized when it was time to light candles and sing, that it was my mother who purchased the candles every year and we had none. We ended up finding some weird 1” diameter candle that was probably 30 years old in a drawer. That’s the thing, you don’t realize how important it is to celebrate things until the person who made every holiday magical and every birthday special and brought fun and joy to the every day isn’t there.
So yes, I’m an adult who makes her birthday a “week,” less because of multiple birthday events taking place and more because I can wriggle my way out of a number of chores and errands by using that excuse and my indulgent but kind husband goes with it. I recently saw a video of a comedian whose bit was about how he hates “birthday people.” Somewhere in there he said something about how we’re adults and we should know that birthdays are stupid because they’re just regular days. Nothing he said was particularly funny nor memorable but his point was clear: there are apparently birthday people and anti-birthday people.
You could just as easily call them uppers and downers.
karmic intervention!! So glad you got the peppermint stick ice cream. Your writing makes me miss you and appreciate you all in one. My husband’s birthday is in two days and this is all the encouragement I need to push for more celebrations this week. (And in the weeks to come) Cheers Karen!!