I love to make a big deal about my birthday. I was born on my father’s birthday, November 29th, which probably doesn’t mean anything to anyone else, but I like the co-inky-dink. (I also share this birth date with Louisa May Alcott and Mariano Rivera, but I’ll try not to read too much into this.) My birthday is just after Thanksgiving and just a few weeks before Christmas. For me it heralds the start of the holiday season. And this year, I turned 56. I was born in 1956. I think some people call this a golden birthday.

Birthdays are great because they’re all about YOU. For some people, things are all about them ALL the time, but for most of us, this is a very rare and much craved experience. You get to pick the restaurant where you go out for dinner (and can order dessert too, guilt-free). You can take the day off of work or sleep late, and no one will hassle you for it.

And you get a lot of mail, a lot of fan mail. There are so many surprises folded into the ritual of people reaching out to you on your birthday. I mean, just when you think you’ve fallen off someone’s radar, you find out that they still remember you – and fondly at that.

So, on my birthday, I received a text message from my niece and one from my cousin’s girlfriend. My email box contained an assortment of greetings including notifications that facebook birthday wishes had been inserted into my timeline (If I understood how to use facebook better, I would plan to do the same for others). My timeline had short notes from close friends, professional acquaintances, and even from a couple fellahs I used to date. And, much to my delight, I started receiving birthday cards several days before the 29th. My best friend, who lives in California now, sent me a card with an obtuse sort of Ecsher-esque drawing on the front and a thin package of scratch’n sniff Happy Birthday stickers in the crease. (When the actual hoopla around my personal festival has died down, some cold December night, I will probably tear apart the plastic wrapper on the pack of stickers and scratch the one that’s shaped like a cupcake.)

On my birthday, a good friend joined me for a late-afternoon cocktail at the Tiny Lounge and my sweetheart – ah, my sweetheart lavished me with a large amount of small attentions. He bought me a sweater, and a necklace, and a pair of hand-made mittens with button-eyed monkey faces. (Since I was born in the Year of the Monkey according to the Chinese calendar, this was special to me.) He took me to a restaurant I picked out based on a friend’s recommendation, and he greeted me on my special day with a pink envelope containing a funny card and hand-written note that was perfect.

When you give the perfect card to someone for a special occasion, it feels good. I know I’ve enjoyed seeing a card I have bought passed around at a friend’s birthday gathering. (It sort of makes the time spent standing over the Papyrus or Avanti display rack feel worthwhile.) It feels good to have “nailed it,” to have captured something truthful or funny or unique in a piece of cardboard and a twenty-six word message. It feels even better to receive a truly personalized sentiment.

I suppose that over the years, I have learned ways to celebrate myself. I have practiced the art of finding qualities I like about myself and acknowledging them. But gosh darn it, it feels great when the best of what you hope to send out into the world is directed to you.

Whether sung out loud, shouted after the word “Surprise,” scrawled in a card, or whispered in your ear before a kiss, being acknowledged as a special part of someone’s life is no small thing.