Celebrating My Birthday Away from Home

This is the first year I’ll be celebrating my birthday away from home. Of course, it’s only natural when I’m beginning a tradition like going to watch the Rays play every year for my birthday. But this year’s situation feels very bittersweet due to other factors.

I moved out of my parents’ house last November. I’ve realized that decision at least partially influenced my comfort level with starting my Rays birthday trip tradition — the last two years, I went through the early planning stages but ultimately decided against the travels while still living at home. By default though, this year will also be the first birthday I’ll be spending away from my family.

Even if you’re not that far away, living away from family makes celebrating birthdays and other holidays challenging. It’s even more difficult when everyone works for a living and has to coordinate their plans with one another’s schedules. Is this what being an adult is like? I recall that when I was still living at home, I was actually able to celebrate with others on my actual birthday (give or take one day), regardless of what day of the week it fell on. (At least now that I have established my Rays birthday trip tradition, I can be sure that I’ll be “celebrating” in some way on my actual birthday — just off on my own.)

My family has always celebrated my dad’s and my birthdays together because my dad’s birthday is exactly one day after mine. That meant that every year, my dad and I would just share one birthday cake — always with the same message in frosting, “Happy Birthday Sandy and Kenny,” although there were the rare occasions when my dad’s name came first. Below are photos of our birthday cakes from the last six years — we lived right around the corner from a Carvel, so most of them are Carvel ice cream cakes (and growing up, we definitely got a lot of Carvel cakes for birthdays!).

It’ll be the first year my dad and I won’t be doing a shared birthday cake, although we had tried to squeeze in an early birthday celebration. Because my sister and I have both moved out — and, of course, because of my Rays birthday trip — my parents, sister, and I had planned on celebrating more than a week early. That was meant to happen this past weekend, but sadly, my mom got COVID after returning from a trip the week before. (Thankfully, she is recovering and doing okay!) I will also be traveling for half of September, making a late birthday celebration virtually impossible (and pointless by then), so we will not likely be able to get together as a family to celebrate this year.

“Unestablished established” traditions have always struck me as odd, especially in my family because we’re not exactly a close-knit or sentimental bunch. Perhaps birthdays have always been unestablished established traditions though — it just seems that celebrating with cake and/or family has always been the norm. No one really asks, “Do you want cake for your birthday this year?” but rather, “What cake do you want for your birthday this year?”

In any case, I am disappointed that my family can’t carry out this unestablished established tradition for my birthday this year. But even so, I consider myself lucky that the first year of my Rays birthday tradition brings me to Florida, with a stop in Palm Beach on my actual birthday to visit my best friend Nick. He is baking me a birthday cake (matcha cheesecake, yum!) since I won’t be able to celebrate at all with my family this year.

Cheers to growing older? Adulthood? Traveling for birthdays? Making plans with family when everyone is an adult? Even if not all of it is appealing, I'm here for it all.