Voyassitude

Late March, 2020. I’m turning 28. I’m alone in my room, eating a cake that leaves a bittersweet taste. My birthday is one of my favorite dates in the calendar, but as I finish the cookies-and-cream cake, I realize I can’t remember what I did in previous years to celebrate. There was nothing memorable, nothing worth revisiting in my mind. And, of course, that particular year is impossible to do something special with the world shut down due to the pandemic. The feeling of imprisonment sours my mood. I realize I’m wasting my birthdays, but I’m done with it, so I vow to change things next year.

Twelve months later, I’m drinking an awful Bloody Mary cocktail next to a pool in the hotel I booked for three days. I don’t go far, I remain in Orlando since travel restrictions are still tough in most places, but at least I’m free from home. Or… am I? Later that night, sipping a Guinness at an Irish pub, I still feel very much anchored to the place where I live. It’s a better birthday than the last one, definitely, but I want more, something breathtaking surrounded by the unknown. Perhaps it’s the pub, or the beer itself, but an idea surfaces in my mind, and so I promise myself one more thing.

That’s how, by the end of March in 2022, I turn 30 in Edinburgh (after a brief layover in Dublin, which obviously included a tour of the Guinness brewery). I dedicate my birthday morning to climbing Arthur’s Seat. Once I make it up there, the fog all around is so thick I can barely see a few meters ahead, let alone the city below. But I sit on a spiky rock that seems like a throne, as if I had just dethroned Arthur to call myself king because that’s how I feel: powerful, majestic, supreme. Eternal. Overwhelmed. I’m far away from home and loved ones, but this is the best birthday I can remember.

And then comes Alsace, in the northeast of France. I find myself reaching the sweet age of thirty-one while riding a bike through the hills of the Alsatian landscape. I’m following the dad of my dear friend Camille, who invited me to spend some days at their home in Voegtlinshoffen. We’re riding electric bikes, so we reach frantic speeds through the roads, wind crashing in my face but unable to erase my stupid grin of delight because I feel like I’m on the Tour de France. Exhilaration takes over me.

And then, a few hours later, Camille and her parents find out it is my birthday (I hadn’t told them before). They improvise a special dinner, open a bottle of gewürztraminer wine, and sing Joyeux Anniversaire to me. I’m in Heaven.

Needless to say, this has become a tradition for me. I start daydreaming about where I’ll be for my birthday months in advance. By the end of March 2024, I’m in France again, this time in Paris. In the morning, I run by the Seine as if I were part of a marathon in the upcoming Olympics, and in the evening, I dance to the rhythm of Colombian cumbia thanks to a band from my hometown that plays in the 11^th arrondisement. Even the rain after that insanely wonderful concert feels like the best of gifts to celebrate reaching the 32^nd floor. And the following year? It’s cumbia again, but the Argentinian style. I wander the streets of Buenos Aires, visit La Boca neighborhood, go to a River Plate soccer match, and dance the night away feeling sacred and divine as I enter my 33^rd year on Earth.

I had to hit rock bottom to go out there seeking something better, something memorable. Many of my birthdays from the end of the last decade are forever forgotten in that stream of uneventful days that fill our lives. But after 2020, I made sure to go searching for a place, an experience, an indelible moment that would never be forgotten. And ever since, each birthday of mine has been unique and utterly memorable.

So yeah, it’s fair to say I cannot wait for the next one.