Birthday in Covid19 lockdown
On March 29th I celebrated my 40th birthday. It was a birthday that before the Covid 19 pandemic was already weighing on me in terms of what have I achieved already and what I have to show for it. However the celebrations wouldn’t be any different than any other birthday. For about 10 years now it is tradition that I will go and watch a musical by myself. Sometimes I make a weekend out of in and sometimes it is just for one day and the other I will eat birthday cake with my family.
This year it would have been a 4 day weekend at the beach town of Scheveningen (which is part of The Hague), with a visit to “Kinky Boots” on Sunday afternoon. My accommodation was already booked, but as there were enough seats left at the theatre I waited a bit longer with the ticket for the show. Then it was decided first decided that all events with more than 1000 spectators couldn’t take place anymore in Belgium. No panic yet my side as the venue only has 1007 seats, and not yet sold out. So I would just wait a bit longer to book my seat. Some days later all indoor events were cancelled regardless of the number of participants. Still nothing to worry about as while in Belgium all restaurants and cafés were already closed, in The Netherlands they were still open. A weekend of walking, enjoying a good pancake and just absorbing some regular Vitamin Sea would still be possible. But about 3 days later we were in a soft lockdown and all non-essential shops were closed as well and non-essential car travel was prohibited. Hence I needed to cancel my hotel as well and it would be a birthday at home. The Netherlands later also closed their catering industry.
While any other year I only get one birthday card from my parents I got quite a few this year. With Facebook telling everyone that x or y of your friends has a birthday it became really easy to put a message on that friends wall even though you actually forgot his or her birthday. Not all cards arrived before the big day but it certainly was nice to be thought of in that way. And my aunt, while she had the actual day wrong, biked from her place to mine (about 22 km one way, so not much for someone who loves cycling) to give me a personal birthday message. Off course keeping the 1.5m social distancing rule in mind.
On the actual day I had a date with my sister and niece and nephew to play a board game over conference call. There I sat with my own printed version of the boardgame and a pawn and they with theirs on the other end of the webcam. Don’t know were she found the game, but it was a very active one with high knees, squats, plank, push-ups, regular and frog-jumps, and balancing on one leg with your eyes closed. My niece, who turned 3 in February, was easily bored and bowed out early in the game. My nephew, who turned 6 a week before is sister, on the other hand was quite competitive. He wasn’t always happy with the prompts he needed to execute but he was driven to win. After about 2 hours and a lot of laughs, I won, and because it was my birthday it softened the blow a bit of him ending in second place.
The afternoon was spend removing my old gel nail polish and putting on new one.
All in all it wasn’t the birthday I expected it to be before the pandemic started, but I really enjoyed myself. The sea isn’t going anywhere and I hope it can inspire myself and others to go back to sending more “old fashioned” cards and letters to each other, for any occasion.
