Mother Forgets Her Only Child’s First Birthday

How can an event I don’t remember cause me pain? I ask myself that question each time I peruse my baby book—which, thankfully, doesn’t happen very often. 

Recently, I looked again at that stained, yellow, satin-covered keepsake. There, recorded in cursive, was all the reason I needed to question my value. Mom hadn’t even tried to hide it. 

“Your first birthday — Diana — we had the wrong day in mind and it slipped up on us,” Mom had written. “Didn’t realize our mistake until two days after it passed…” 

Now, before anyone accuses me of being too judgmental and emotional, let me explain. At least I had a baby book. Right? And I lived with both my birth parents. But who forgets their only child’s first birthday? (The next child wasn’t born until I was five.) What must have happened to cause such an oversight? I wanted answers.

When my mother was in her fifties, I broke down and asked her how such a mistake had been possible. Her response was even more disquieting than her tell-tale note. 

She gave me a defiant look and said, “We just forgot.”

Either she didn’t think I deserved an explanation or there wasn’t a credible answer. As a child, I’d conjured an excuse for her; I simply wasn’t that important. 

Yes, she’d just forgotten my first birthday the same way she’d accidentally sent me to school on Fair Day and hadn’t noticed I’d been left at a football stadium one night. I guess that’s part of the sting. 

In my soon-to-be-released memoir I didn’t write about my forgotten first birthday. In comparison to other childhood slights and emotional wounds, that one didn’t stand out. Still, I wonder what had been taking place on that Tuesday in 1955—and what had been running through my mother’s mind when she’d recorded her bad mommy moment.

Did she find her absentminded flub humorous? And, if so, why? Did she want me to know my birthday wasn’t worthy of remembrance? If she hadn’t admitted the incident, I’d have never known about it. Though my belated birthday celebration caused me no harm, I cannot quit pondering its significance.