Our theme for the month of March is “I was wrong about.”

Me and my friends, we made it a sort of glamorous thing to cry on our birthdays. 

When I was in high school, it was a sort of rite of passage into the new years of our lives to send one another a red-faced, puffy-eyed snapchat and then to plan an ice cream run. It didn’t matter if your birthday was in the winter (mine is) or if there was a blizzard outside (there normally was) the ice cream run, and probably more crying, was part of the rhythm. 

Don’t get me wrong, I actually really looked forward to my birthdays. But to expect a happy day during a generally unhappy time such as high school and to wake up feeling like, well, the same ordinary (and somewhat depressed) you as yesterday was slightly disappointing. 

I continued the rite through college, though I lost touch with the ice-cream-run friends and gained a husband to cry to instead. (To say he was bewildered on the first of my birthdays together would be an understatement.)

But something changed for me when my sister and I found a string of polka-dot bunting in a HEMA in France a little over a year ago. 

When I was little, birthdays were a full-day celebration, not in the least because of Daniela, my Swiss auntie. She threw themed parties, wrote notes for every hour of the day, and gave gifts entirely themed in your favorite color. She hugged and kissed and had you over for dinner, where colorful bunting from HEMA covered the dining room from floor to ceiling.

When I was little, being on the receiving end of Daniela’s magic was one of the best experiences in the world. 

So I got really excited about this bunting in HEMA. I put it up for Christmas, (it’s pink, purple, yellow, blue, and green—very Christmassy) my birthday, Caleb’s birthday, our anniversary, and any other holiday I could think of. 

Soon I was making a little bit of holiday magic—creating our own Christmas decorations, surprising Caleb with an ice cream cake for his birthday, and baking/decorating (way too many) cookies in the winter, and as my birthday came around again this year, I asked myself something new. Sure, I would like to be a little kid again on the receiving end of Daniela’s magic on my birthday—but would it be so bad to try making the magic myself? 

My first reaction, of course, was yes. That would be so bad, because the people you love are supposed to make your birthday special. That’s what we believe when we’re young, because the people we love (our parents) do often make our birthdays special for us. 

But what if the disappointment surrounding my birthdays was less about there being no magic, and more about me not believing in it?

My sister and I were talking about this on my birthday as we cleaned my apartment and put up the HEMA bunting in preparation for the twelve people Caleb and I were hosting for dinner that night. 

She said something about loving what we were doing together that day. We were making injera (Ethiopian food) for my parents and some of our friends, lighting candles, and arranging flowers. Caleb was setting up an extra table for dinner, because our regular dining room table isn’t nearly big enough to host the people who were coming. 

“It’s kind of fun to be the adult who makes the magic, isn’t it?” I asked her. 

She smiled and said, “I think that’s part of what makes it magic.”

Kate Wilmot

Kate Wilmot (’24) is a Grand Rapids resident who has found herself in the in-betweens of undergrad and post-grad life. She is an avid children’s fiction reader and a globally-minded cook who will feed anyone that walks in her door. You can find her losing to her husband in pickleball, weight lifting, or getting coffee with her mom.