Cumpleaños feliz

"Feliz Cumpleaños a tí. Feliz Cumpleaños a tí. Sorry I don´t know the rest of the song." John sang softly, as the waiter lit the long white candle in a small bolivian pottery vase.

I clapped my hands, "That´s fun and unexpected!"

"They didn´t have any cake, so I had to get you a banana split for your birthday dessert."

That was just fine by me. In fact the whole day had been a nice, calm celebration of the day of my birth.

True, there had been no tin foil crown, toilet paper streamers and gold cuttlery at the breakfast table, my mom´s off key voice, singing the special birthday song to wake me up, "It´s your birthday. It´s Jenny´s birthday. It´s your birthday. Birthday, today. Oh yeah!"

But, John had remembered the song and told me that I got to pick any breakfast I wanted. After all, that was the Steiner tradition. And even though I couldn´t pick my dad´s chocolate chip pancakes or bulls eye eggs with a slice of cheese for a smile, the Bolivian style breakfast with fried plantains and eggs were quite tasty and set us up for the long walk through the Bolivian countryside to La Gruta del San Pedro.

There had not been twizzlers, peanut m&ms and silly decorations or gag gifts from Ross at Zeitgeist, but nevertheless, John and I made due celebrating on our own in Sorata, Bolivia with a visit to a local cave, complete with its own laguna and a celebratory bottle of Chilean wine for five whole American dollars! That´s right, we broke the bank for my birthday.

We even met a friend, a man from Galicia, Spain now living in this sleepy town at the base of la cordillera real. He joined us at the end of our birthday salad and pizza, chain smoking, sipping a beer and regaling us with strange stories of his torid youth. When he jumped up suddenly, claiming to need to get money to pay his bill, we thought nothing of it. But upon his return, he slipped me a birthday gift under the table in a small plastic bag. . . possiby something that might have been better suited for my brother. But as they say, it´s the thought that counts.

And the day had indeed been full of happy, fun, birthday thoughts.