Birthday Breakfast – Thirty-Fourth Edition

Sezane tank
Mavi jeans (c/o)
Zara sandals (similar)
Mango handbag
RayBan sunglasses
Linjer rings (c/o)
Location: Kallisperi 10 – Athens, Greece

We snapped these photos on the morning of my thirty-fourth birthday. Thirty-four. An age that, as a younger person, I gave very little thought to someday reaching. An age that is less a milestone than an eventuality. And yet, I looked forward to my birthday this year – and not just because I would be spending it in Athens. I went so far as to write out thirty-four thoughts on turning thirty-four. Despite a rough patch in the summer, things were going well for me, leading up to my birthday. I felt like I was really on track, both personally and professionally.

Famous last words.

But on the day of my thirty-fourth birthday, some of the cracks began to show. It rained, for a start. Not just briefly, but all afternoon, spoiling all of my plans for a rooftop lunch and nap in the sun. I contracted a virulent case of food poisoning from the lunch I did end up eating, which sidelined me and left me eating a steady diet of soda crackers for weeks after we came home. Since then, it feels a bit like we’ve dealt with one setback after another. Things that we probably should have known were too good to be true have proven to be exactly that. And so we find ourselves coming to the end of 2019, a year that was initially full of highlights, at a particularly low point.

And looking back at these birthday morning photos, I can’t help but envy the happy girl who was just on her way to her favourite Athenian bakery to pick up baklava. She was none the wiser.

It was Jane Birkin who said, “But who wants an easy life? It’s boring!” And I know she was right. We don’t grow when we are comfortable, to quote the often reprinted platitude. I know that we will find our way through our current trials and come out the other side stronger. Eventually, we’ll even look back on these months and laugh. That’s just the way life works. None of this will kill us, so we will inevitably be able to see the humour in it one day.

But even though I know all of that intellectually, it isn’t easy to accept emotionally.

If I could go back in time to September twenty-fourth, I would remind myself that there are worse things in life than a bit of rain on your birthday. But the truth is, I know I would ignore myself.

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