September 9 is the most common birthday in America.
About 12,300 babies are born on that date in an average year.
This year, three of them crossed my path.
One turned fifty.
One turned thirty-five.
And one turned five.
The five-year-old is a cat. I didn't find that out until the end of the day.
The fifty-year-old is a neighbor and friend.
A few weeks before her birthday, we'd been talking about what comes next.
Her kids are in eighth and ninth grade. They're nowhere near leaving home yet, but there's enough distance behind them now to see that there is a horizon.
Her husband has taken up a new hobby. He's the one roasting coffee now.
She said she realized she was going to need a hobby, too.
She has always loved birds. She knows the birds in our neighborhood and notices the ones in her backyard.
She's thinking about what she might want waiting for her when there is more space in her life.
So she signed up for a class with John Muir Laws through Stanford Continuing Studies: Drawing and Painting Birds: A Naturalist's Approach to Art and Observation.
Five Thursday evenings, October 22 through November 19. Online.
The class was already on her calendar.
Then, last week, her husband sent a text to me, another neighbor, and her mom.
It said:
Hi all! I need a hand next week, if you’re able. I’m coming back from my conference Tuesday night to go to dinner at Masullo and the Weezer show with Erin and the kids. We’re going to wake up and go to the gym and have a birthday morning celebration and then I have to head back to Oakland. Can you three take her and the kids out for a nice dinner on Wednesday?
That was the request.
Take her to dinner.
We knew what she loved.
And we decided on birds.
On the morning of her birthday, two of us set our alarms ten minutes earlier and went to the gym ahead of her.
She had been expecting us to come with her.
When she pulled up to the houses to pick us up, no one came out.
She texted:
Here.
No one responded.
We were already inside, busy decorating, phones put away.
She was sitting in the dark with her husband, knowing we were awake and somehow experiencing us as ditching her.
We weren't.
A fellow class member had organized a birthday surprise: a card, a workout shirt, and bird crowns for everyone to wear during the workout.
The rest of us arrived early so everything would be ready before she got there.
The misunderstanding was cleared up when she walked into the studio and saw what we'd been doing.
Then the birds showed up everywhere.
We picked Magpie for dinner.
I gave her Amy Tan's The Backyard Bird Chronicles, along with the postcards and affirmation deck.
There was a David Sibley book that helps you imagine what it might feel like to actually be a bird.
There was also a John Muir Laws book about drawing birds.
We got bird tattoos.
I ordered a workout outfit covered in flying cranes. It didn't arrive in time.
And the coach made a bird playlist for the workout:
“When Doves Cry.”
“Free Bird.”
“Blackbird.”
“I'm Like a Bird.”
We did low rows in the bird dog pose, and our recovery block included the pigeon.
Written out like this, it sounds like a lot.
It was a lot.
But none of it felt like too much while we were doing it.
It felt like the obvious response.
The birds weren't the joke.
The birds were the point.
The day before her birthday, I heard Marianne Williamson talking about how much time we spend thinking about what we're not getting from other people—what isn't offered, what never quite arrives.
Then she asked a different question:
What am I giving?
I thought about that when I looked at what my friend's husband had done.
He could have focused on the fact that he wasn't going to be there for most of her birthday.
Instead, he figured out who could be.
And we didn't have to guess what would make her feel celebrated.
We already knew what she loved.
After the workout, we did our favorite thing.
We call it Sunday-Thursday.
It started months ago on a Thursday after class. I suggested donuts. We went to Marie's down the street. We each got our favorite. I got mine and an apple fritter because it was hot.
We went back to her house, ate donuts, drank coffee, and talked about nothing and everything.
It was a great morning before the day pulled us in different directions.
Later, she told me it was the best entry into an otherwise rough day.
It felt like a Sunday.
So now it's a ritual, and we call it Sunday-Thursday.
Hot donuts and coffee after a 5:00 a.m. workout, on Thursdays.
But her birthday was Wednesday.
So this time it was Sunday-Thursday-Wednesday.
The name makes no sense and we keep it anyway.
Later that morning, I had a coaching session with a client.
I told her about how it all started—the crowns, the donuts, all of it.
Turns out it was her birthday, too. She was turning thirty-five.
She said she felt blessed.
Then, after a beat, she said she felt sad.
She hadn't expected the sadness.
She'd had a good year. Good things were happening. She was proud of where her life was going.
And she wished her mother were here to see it.
I kept thinking about that for the rest of the day.
A birthday can hold both.
The life you have.
And the person who isn't here to see it.
At fifty, my friend is looking ahead to the years when her children won't be at home and thinking about what she wants to have waiting for her.
At thirty-five, my client was looking at what she has built and wishing her mother could see it.
Then there was the cat.
At the end of the day, I found out my grand-cat Stormy was turning five in Fairbanks, Alaska, too.
A milestone to us. Not to a cat.
Thirty-five.
Fifty.
Five.
A client. A friend. A cat.
All born on September 9.
About 12,300 people share that date in an average year.
And somehow these three ended up in my day.
I keep thinking about the birds.
Not because there were so many of them.
Because she already loved them.
She already knew them.
She was already making room for them.
She had already put five Thursday evenings on her calendar.
We noticed.
Then we added more.
A book.
A playlist.
A tattoo.
A dinner at a restaurant called Magpie.
Bird crowns at 5 a.m.
A crane-covered workout outfit that didn't arrive in time.
It was a little fuss over something she already loved.
We didn't give her an interest.
We didn't decide what she should do with the next part of her life.
We paid attention.
She had already started.
We just joined in.
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