OK, so I’m 75 and I want to be a movie star. It’s the day of my birthday, and my kids said to meet them at their house and then we’d go to my favorite restaurant for dinner. So I take a taxi to their house and I arrive early. I’m always early. I’m early because I’m neurotic and have abandonment issues. I arrive at my daughter Bonny and her husband Gary’s home. Why is it dark?
“Surprise!” about 30 people yell. “Hava Negillah” plays and everyone is hugging me — cousins, and some relatives I don’t speak to, or haven’t seen in years.
“Oh my God,” I say, trying to smile, hugging Bonny and her husband. I hate surprises. Especially surprise parties. Fred, my kids’ black lab, is barking and licking the chopped liver and Brie on the platters, and I’m gushing how happy I am to see everyone.
Bonny places a gold crown on my head and places me in a tall chair. Everyone sits around in a circle, and I open gifts. Lots of gift cards to Whole Foods, facials, gyms, re-gifted gifts — a chipped cup, tarnished earrings I’d seen Aunt Min wear for years. But my kids give me a gold locket and on the front it’s engraved I love you.
Then we have dinner. We sit at a U-shaped, long table that Bonny decorated with white roses, my favorite flower. Helium balloons printed with “Happy Birthday 75” float on the ceiling, like loose stars.
The dinner is delicious. Bonny made my favorite, pot roast and potatoes and all kinds of relishes, soups and salads. Everyone is talking at once and stuffing their faces, talking about their cataract surgeries, who filed for bankruptcy and who went “crazy” in the family and is a communist. Fred is barking and eating off the plates.
“You look good for your age,” says Aunt Zoe, wearing a rhinestone tiara on her orange-dyed hair.
“How am I supposed to look?” I defiantly ask.
“Like an old lady,” she snaps. “That’s what you are. Just like me. But oy, you wear jewelry like a gypsy, net stockings and those four-inch heels. Wait till you break a hip.”
“Down the tube she’ll go, “ says my cousin Lenny, “like Harry Berman.’’
“Age is a numbers game,” I say. “ It’s the spirit that counts. I’m not ready to play bingo and go on an AARP cruise to Alaska.”
“Nu? Why not? “ says Aunt Min in a thin voice. “You’re too good? You might meet someone instead of shlepping around the country on those nutty television shows, all day writing those novels and crazy sex scenes.”
“Mom is a boomer hottie,” Bonny says. “She pursues her dreams.”
“Oy,’’ says Aunt Lil, narrowing her tiny eyes at me. “Now she’s a boomer hottie. What’s wrong with a husband?”
“Most of the men my age that I meet are so stuffed with Viagra they can’t move,” I say. “A boomer hottie doesn’t follow fashion,” I argue, my voice rising. “She knows who she is. She follows her style. It’s attitude. We’re all boomer hotties.’’
Uncle Normie stares at me a long moment, his eyes magnified behind his thick rimless glasses. “A little Botox on the saggy throat and you’ll get a guy before it’s too late.”
“So nu? Get a clothespin,“ Uncle Max shouts.
“She doesn’t need a clothespin. A scarf is good enough,” my son-in-law Gary says.
“She needs a husband. The hell with the Botox. Does she want to do die alone in a nursing home with a balloon tied around her wrist?‘’
“Here comes the cake,” they shout. Bonny carries the beautiful cake she made from scratch and decorated with crystal stars. They sing “Happy Birthday” in high wavering voices. On top of the cake, under the number 75, in pink icing it says, ”BOOMER HOTTIE!” There are lots of candles. “Make a wish!” they call.
I blow, blow hard, my cheeks puffing out, wishing that the potholes are fixed in San Francisco, and that all these people are blessed, and I thank God, for having these wonderful people who mean well and my great children and for another year, and for being a boomer hottie.
Barbara Rose Brooker of San Francisco is the author of “The Viagra Diaries,” which has been optioned to HBO for a series starring Goldie Hawn. Her new novel, “Love, Sometimes,” is slated to be published in 2012. She can be reached at [email protected].