What do you like best about birthdays?

My mom and I were just talking about birthdays yesterday. She felt that celebrating a birthday should be more about the mother who gave birth to the person rather than about the person who was born. I disagreed with her. Well, that's not true. I agreed with her to an extent, that celebrating a birthday should INCLUDE the mother since she was obviously the one who put in all the blood, sweat, and tears of childbirth....but I also feel that it is important for individuals to have a day to celebrate their living existence, just for being who they are without it being attached to some kind of social role or encouraged formal celebration(Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, wedding, baby shower, graduation,etc).

So with that said, what I like best about birthdays is spending quality time with those I love and those who love me. I think when I was younger I used to have high expectations, build a birthday celebration up to something unattainably joyful, thus I was frequently disappointed. The past five years though, it's the little things that make me happy: an unexpected phone call, email, or thoughtful gift letting me know I'm loved even when I may not always be reminded of it on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. It's also fun to think of something different to do on my birthday, like taking an adventurous trip to snowcovered waterfalls in the middle of nowhere with two of my closest friends. It's those memories that make birthdays the best. Birthdays also have a way of instilling self-reflection, how far I've grown (in all ways) as a person as well as how far I have yet to go!