The Last Birthday Before Everything Changed

My friend Willa turned thirty-one in August.

In October she was having a baby.

Her first. Wanted, planned, arrived after some difficulty. The pregnancy had been smooth and she was ready and also, in the way of most people standing on the edge of something enormous, not entirely sure what ready meant for a thing you had never done before.

I thought about her birthday for weeks.

Everyone around her was focused on the baby. The shower had happened. The nursery was done. The practical things were handled. She was surrounded by onesies and receiving blankets and small soft things in gentle colors.

Her birthday felt like the last day of something.

Not in a sad way. In the specific way of a threshold moment, the last ordinary birthday of the version of herself she had been for thirty-one years. The person who went for long Saturday morning runs and read novels in the bath and took last-minute trips when work allowed and had opinions about restaurants. That person was not going away. But she was about to share herself in a way she never had, and nothing was going to be quite the same again, and August was the last of the before.

I wanted to give her something that belonged entirely to the before.

She had a favorite perfume. She had worn it for years, a specific one, unusual enough that I had asked her about it twice and she had always said the same thing: it just smells like me.

I found a small perfumery that made bespoke candles. You sent them your perfume and they translated it into a candle, same notes, same character, something you could light on a Tuesday evening when the baby was finally asleep and you wanted, for twenty minutes, to remember something about who you also were.

I included a note that said: for when you want to come back to yourself for a little while. She will always be yours. So will this.

She opened it at her birthday dinner. She smelled it for a long time.

She said: this smells like me.

I said: I know. I thought you might need it.

She said: I already need it and she is not even here yet.

She laughed and held the candle.

She said: thank you for the before.

I said: there will be an after too. It is going to be very good.

She looked at me over the candle.

She said: I know. I am just going to miss this version of August.

So was I. That is worth marking.