year 31

An orange rose from le hubby, given a day in advance because
flower shops were closed on my birthday

I dreaded my 31st birthday. It’s like a screaming signboard that says I’m no longer young, that I have to step up to what being 31 should be (what should it be?). I guess that fear is somehow a subconscious reason why I decided to celebrate it simply. Well, aside from the fact that I’m also watching my spending these days for something I’m saving up for, I wanted my birthday to be quiet.

I was initially planning to celebrate it at a fancy restaurant, but I scratched the idea. Besides, my birthday fell on Maundy Thursday, which means there are no establishments open. I could see no point in putting the celebration to a later date. And so I decided to go for something really simple and quiet—an afternoon picnic with my husband in UP.

After the morning chores, which included cleaning the house and organizing our many stuff (finally, our contractor finished their job and we’re now able to put everything in their proper place; more on this in a future post), cooking lunch and doing the laundry, I finally got around to preparing our humble picnic fare—freshly brewed Monk’s Blend coffee from Davao and a half roll of mango cake from Red Ribbon, plus a bag of tortilla chips. And when I was done making sure that we have all the other things we needed, we were off to UP at the stroke of 3:30PM.

Finding a nice spot in Lagoon wasn’t that difficult, but making sure we’re at a safe distance from other picnickers was a challenge; I didn’t want other people encroaching our spot. We finally settled to lay the sarong-turned-picnic-mat under a large tree, and set out to devour our fare. Our hushed conversation was punctuated by peals of laughter from nearby kids playing and the chime of the Carillon. (I felt giddy hearing the bells tolling to the tune of UP Naming Mahal, albeit being out of tune, haha!) When the sunlight was threatening to fade, we decided to move camp to Sunken Garden.

Walking along the University Oval on a weekend or a holiday has always been a calming experience. We were greeted by shafts of late afternoon light while we were on our way to lagoon, and on our way to Sunken Garden, more than a handful of joggers and cyclists were already occupying the traffic-less lanes.

We sat at the “rim” of the famous university landmark, not daring to come down any further for fear that a stray soccer ball or disc might hit us, what with the many groups of families and friends engaging in the sports. So we just sat there talking about mundane things—a mom looking tired from playing soccer with her husband and kids, which among the four boys were her kids, how a toy dog (was it a dachshund?) not far away from us can bark so loud, how we badly want our own dog but can’t (condo rules, boooo!), our future kids getting used to hanging out in UP every weekends especially now that we live nearby, and many other things we found interesting at that moment. When it was almost 7PM, we got up, packed our things and headed home.

Looking back at that simple celebration, I can’t help but think that I was so silly to have been terrified of turning another year older. If every year will be as peaceful and wonderful as that afternoon, I can get used to turning over a new leaf after another.