Drive-By Birthday

Never has the network of relationships—close and casual—that bind a community together, been more meaningful.

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Lockdown, I think, is particularly hard on teenagers. Consider it: right in the thick of adolescent transition, when family bonds begin to loosen and the blossoming of your social life finally coincides with a measure of freedom, you suddenly find yourself stuck at home with no-one but your parents for company. It's been hard on our two, for while a remote farm in the countryside is surely a wondrous place to be a small child, by the time one reaches middle adolescence and seeing friends becomes more important than building forts, living in the middle of nowhere presents a particular set of challenges. So spare a thought for a certain young lady in our household, for whom April 17 marked a seventeenth birthday. The notion of reaching her "golden birthday" had resonated with Mathilde—I think she imagined it heralding the dawn of an exciting new chapter filled with discovery, travel, and bold new experiences. Instead, on Mathilde's birthday the sun rose on a day much like all others since her school closed in mid-March: breakfast … a run … some online schoolwork … maybe a movie or two. She put on a brave face as her mom and I tried hard to make it special, but by late afternoon the cracks were beginning to show. And really, who could blame her?

Community to the rescue. Unbeknownst to the birthday girl her mom had conspired with a couple of Mathilde's friends to do an afternoon drive-by to wish her a happy birthday. Word had gotten around, and whether you credit small town spirit, adolescent ingenuity, or a collective enthusiasm for doing something—anything—outside the four walls of their own homes, by the time 6 pm arrived more than thirty carloads of friends and acquaintances had created a colorful traffic jam at the end of our road. Mathilde's astonishment was a sight to behold as one vehicle, then another and another, trundled into view with kids hanging out of windows and sunroofs to shower her with confetti, balloons, and birthday wishes. Long before the last car had vanished down the driveway the outpouring of kindness and affection had reduced the birthday girl to tears of gratitude. I don't mind admitting that there wasn't a dry eye anywhere else in the house, either.

St. Francisville didn't invent drive-by birthday parades of course, but never have I more tangibly felt the network of relationships, close and casual, that bind a community together. And, I would suggest, never have we needed it more. Even while we can't gather in a traditional sense, the loose, diaphanous, but endlessly durable safety net of friends, classmates, teachers, team members, neighbors, and acquaintances who care enough to come make a birthday matter at this strangest of times, makes all the difference in the world. So let's raise a glass to those with April birthdays everywhere, and find comfort in the fact that, when you have a community, there's no such thing as being alone.

—James Fox-Smith.