A very 1900's birthday

Wanting less when your world feel small.

In 2011, I got really into an early aughts PBS reality television series called Regency House Party, via Netflix. If you read the description, you’ll know why I was intrigued:

Does the rigid and confined world of the early nineteenth century have something to teach the young of today who are looking for love? Following the success of Manor House and Colonial House, Regency House Party gives 10 men and women - all genuinely looking for love - the chance to go back to the England of the early 1800s and live in the age of romance. The ten singles all spend nine weeks living together as they would have 200 years ago.

Oh yeah, while this was the only dating series, they made a BUNCH of these historical simulation shows.

Victorian Slum House! (Mental note to track this down …)

Over a decade ago, streaming was still pretty crude by today’s standards, so I was confined to my Netflix DVD queue, unfortunately. I devoured Regency Party House, 1940’s House, and 1900’s House in quick succession.

Viewers time-travel vicariously in this four-part "docu-soap" that transplants a modern family from 1999 to 1900. The series clearly evinces the radical changes in domestic life wrought by the scientific and technological innovations of the last 100 years. The Bowler family are taken back in time to the spring of 1900 in Greenwich, a suburb of London, England. For 3 months, they live as a family in 1900 would have lived.

So many moments from these shows stuck with me while watching modern day people attempt to live in another time for an entire THREE MONTHS. In 1940 House this included building a bomb shelter, air raid drills, and a fake rations store for the family to buy goods. And they brought their damn kids into this exercise!!

In 1900 House, I remember that during the experience, one of the children had a birthday, and were confronted with celebrating in turn of the century fashion––which didn’t involve much celebrating at all. Birthdays came and went with little fanfare during this period, maybe a simple dessert and a small token like a handkerchief. Oftentimes people would be gifted items that were already in the house. The kids were like…what the fresh hell is this existence? And, frankly, I agreed. Can we not do better than a spool of thread from the cupboard?

I’ve thought about this scene often, and it always forces me to acknowledge my own feelings about annual expectations, and no more so than on May 27th––my own birthday.

Birthdays didn’t really become a thing in America and Western Europe until the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. The song, “Happy Birthday” wasn’t even written until 1893! Until then, the passage of time was murky with unreliable, and often inaccessible clocks, but mass manufacturing put an accurate watch in every pocket. And, as more people followed the schedules of factories, streetcars, and trains, they had more reason to watch those clocks. People began to be more attuned to the passage of time, as their ability to witness it became more sophisticated.

As people became more aware of time, they also became more aware of how it passed in their own lives, with a newfound focus on age in many 19th-century institutions. For instance, this is when schools started using age to separate students into grades, and medical professionals began using it to assess people’s health and development. Not coincidentally, this was the same era when people started noting their birthday.

I also suspect there were more important things to worry about, what with flu pandemics, world wars, and no indoor plumbing. Life seemed too hard for much frivolity.

Existential dread increased with each passing year, and consumerism fueled expectations around birthday celebrations all throughout the 20th century. 100 years later, with social media playing a 24/7 highlight reel of everyone else’s milestones and fetes, both feel like they’ve peaked. At 38 years-old, I find myself rethinking my 26 year-old person stance on turn of the century birthday “parties.”

Let’s have a nice little sponge cake and call it a day.

This past week, I’ve had several friends ask what my plans were for my birthday. I didn’t have a great answer. I knew we were going down to San Diego to stay with my in-laws to have some extra childcare over the long weekend, but hadn’t planned much else. Maybe a nice dinner? Some vague “alone time?” My wants are small this year. Between pandemic and small child limitations, they’ve diminished greatly in the past few years,

When your life becomes smaller, it’s easier to just want less.

I used to make it a point to travel, stay in a luxury hotel, plan a dinner party, or coordinate a festive bar hang with a large group of friends. It’s never been difficult for me to put effort in celebrating my forward thrust through the time space continuum, to achieve the sense that I partied *adequately enough* to meet my own (and shared cultural) expectations for a birthday well spent.

The past few years…not so much. Last year, DEFINITELY not. Three months postpartum with a newborn and toddler, while one week into a kitchen remodel, was not ideal conditions for festivity.

But, I had assumed this was just symptomatic of the natural aging process. Birthdays all become the same after a while. Life starts to plateau near middle age, and marking change from one year to the next gets harder and less exciting. The pressure to continually outdo yourself feels like more effort than it’s worth. The phone calls, texts, and Facebook wishes grow thinner each year, and no one really minds or blames anyone. We’re all juggling a lot.

Plus, aging becomes less exciting, hangovers are harder, and socially we’re all conditioned to think it sucks, so why would you go out of your way to celebrate a slow decline into irrelevancy?

Can you tell today is my birthday? Is everyone else’s birthday fraught with such complicated feelings? Is it because I’m staring down 40 in a big way?

Yesterday I read

Kathryn Jezer-Morton

’s latest piece for her newsletter with The Cut, “Brooding,” and I realized that maybe my feelings aren’t part of the natural order of things, but rather just a phase. Maybe my days of wanting to celebrate, in a good old post-industrial and technological revolution fashion, are not totally lost yet.

Jezer-Morton reflected on what she calls, “camel mode.”

I call it “camel mode” because when you’re caring for young children and giving yourself over to their needs, you are crossing a metaphysical desert of the self, without water, like a camel. “Water” is your sense of personal sovereignty — it lives inside you somewhere (in your … humps), but after you become a parent, it recedes from view and soon from mind.

You can be in camel mode for years without realizing it because part of what defines it is a dulling of the senses. What you care about in camel mode is that everyone is quiet and disaster is averted. Your standards for what constitutes a fun time dip to historic lows. When a co-worker idly asks if you “had a fun summer” or “enjoyed the long weekend,” you may feel a tug of awareness that you have no idea what they mean by that. You might rather spend time alone with your snacks and episodes, rather than with friends, because you feel boring and don’t want to have to do the jazz hands of socializing. But camel mode is not depression; not everything is a diagnosis.

This resonated with me deeply, giving hope that my exhausted apathy towards many aspects of life would once again be restored to actual pleasure and joy.

This includes birthday celebrations. Today, husband got mad at my painfully ambivalent answers to all the suggestions he made in an effort make my day feel special. Naturally, I became defensive. Stop making me make decisions! It’s all FINE.

“I know it’s FINE, but is it what you WANT??”

I understand his appreciation. I was being annoying, but not intentionally so.

Honestly, I don’t know what I want half the time. Parenting two small children with incessant needs, on top of a full time job, layered with part time school, wedged into a marriage, sitting next to a social life pretty much demands that all your wants get minimized into a tiny pill box, lost to the bottom of your backpack.

Turns out, you still need to parent on your special day.

How can I possibly live up to any modern day birthday celebration expectations when finding the time to blow dry my hair is a heavy lift?

That’s how I feel today, but I’m also deep in “camel mode.”

Maybe in a few years, I won’t feel that way anymore. I’ll be able to know what I want. I’ll remember what a fun, relaxing weekend feels like. I’ll feel like celebrating my small life in a big way again.

Until then, I’m truly very happy that my birthday included a simple trip to a coffee shop where my husband and I silently worked on our computers together––a bonding experience we never get anymore.

Oh, and I’ll have a few bites of homemade cake, courtesy of my mother-in-law, because I dunno––camel mode or not, I think people in the 1900’s had a few things right.