BAIRBRE POWER

The older I get, the more open I am to marking birthdays, especially if it means I get to cycle across the Golden Gate Bridge followed by a lunch in Sausalito

One of the supreme ironies of getting older is that I’m finally getting to like actual birthdays. It took its time though. For years, I ignored them, kicking them to the kerb and dispatching those corny, cute-baby-with-cake-on-its-face birthday cards under the cushion where they kept company with the credit card bills.

However, in this brave new world of midlife, I’m finally a convert and I’ve got around to appreciating the joys of marking the day itself by doing something a little different and pushing myself to try new experiences.

This newfound zeal is not because I suspect future birthdays are numbered, but even if they are, I’ve come to recognise each one as something of a personal landmark and just kick back and enjoy the day.

It’s a bit like what they say about babies and how they grow into their looks. When midlife arrives, we’ve a better sense of who we are. We’ve got used to our bodies, our foibles and our family. We know what we like, and more importantly, we know what we don’t like. Which is why I now say ‘No’ to the carrot cake and warm Prosecco and ‘Yes’ to a cycle to the Forty Foot and a banquet of chipper chips on the way home.

After years of dissing b-days, these days I find I’m always first in the queue to proselytise about the merits of stepping off the treadmill of daily life to mark my footprint on earth.

The lightbulb moment came when I turned 50. I have to digress here and say I wasn’t entirely happy about turning 40, but waving au revoir to a very tough decade, I was calm, almost serene about facing down the dreaded big Five O.

A dear friend whose life vibrates deliciously with adventure and laughter, suggested we take ourselves off to San Francisco for a few days and it was there that the magic happened.

We rented bikes, cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge and then, with the freedom of two teenagers cycling to a ceili in the Gaeltacht, we freewheeled down the hill into Sausalito where we had lunch and then doffed our caps at Alcatraz as we took the bay ferry back to the city with our bikes. I remember every glorious moment of that day. It is seared onto my brain as a kind of birthday gift-to-self, a wake-up call that jolted me to the realisation that life may deal you lemons, but aren’t they delicious in a chilled G&T?

I was doing some midlife navel gazing recently, wondering just what it was about birthdays that I never used to enjoy. During my 20s and 30s, I was too busy trying to keep standing to throw formal parties, but there was one memorable fun-filled ‘surprise’ birthday when friends arrived back from Smyths pub on Haddington Road (it was the Cheers of Dublin back then because everyone knew your name) and when disaster struck and our basement flat started to flood, we scattered newspapers while everyone joined in a chorus of “Start spreading the news” ... Some parties are a bit more challenging. We’ve all been to them, those imposing big events where the organisers are so meticulous and strategic that the house painters are called in a year in advance and the plants in the garden miraculously match the colour of the balloons and also the cake. I’m not being a green eyed monster here but sometimes other people’s birthdays leave you feeling more than a little inadequate. Whatever I felt about my own birthday, I did invest a lot of love and attention into my childrens’ parties. I once made a Thomas The Tank cake using an American pound cake recipe which was solid and unexciting — we were left eating it for days.

Over the years we had facepainters and magicians, but one of the sweetest parties had virtually no guests after my daughter got chicken pox on the eve of turning two so we had a doll’s tea party and our two 80-year-old neighbours came as VIP guests.

I think the guilt of the working mum maybe got the better of me during those early primary school years and I channelled my dislike of adult birthday parties into something more positive for the kids. I’m back to making birth days special again and it’s full steam ahead. Planning is half the fun and the next outing will be a midnight kayak trip around West Cork under the moonlight. And when the next big landmark birthday swings around, instead of cycling in San Fran, I think it’s time to have a birthday YEAR of making memories. Who’s joining me?