My birthdays always looked one kind of way when I was raising my four boys as a single mom: Birthday cards, a group gift and takeout for dinner. This was from “the before times”. Before my youngest son moved out of the house; before my sons became men with lives of their own. Before I started to ask to be taken out for a dinner or a breakfast or any kind of acknowledgment, a task that left me feeling scooped out and empty. And so, this year, I tried something new. I celebrated turning 52 on a Windstar 7-day cruise circumnavigating Iceland. My first time in Iceland, my first luxury cruise, my first birthday alone.
On the day itself I slept in late, like a teenager. Deep-muscle happy tired after exploring the beautifully barren Heimaey Island off the south coast of Iceland, seeing puffins and eating caramel ice cream made salty with pieces of black licorice. Two scoops, like when I was a kid. Better, actually. Like a woman who does not need permission to eat ice cream. Who can choose to treat herself to a decadent cruise around an island she’s never seen and never quite imagined seeing.
I brought this same new freedom, this sense of being a woman in my own right apart from mother, to Seyðisfjörður: a little jewel of a town in the eastern region of Iceland known for colourful Nordic wooden homes and a sidewalk painted in rainbow colours by locals back in 2016 to brighten the long winter nights. I stopped to bounce on the local school’s trampoline just a little when no one was looking. I found a hidden waterfall behind the local gas station and went for a quiet walk in the sun.
I was giddy for the first time in years about my birthday. Being alone on the cruise made me an adventurer in all sorts of silly little ways. One evening I joined a line-dancing class despite my urge to eye-roll, two-stepping along with strangers in the lounge. I hiked to Godafoss waterfalls one day, and floated in the thermal waters of Myvatn Nature Baths the next. I crossed the Arctic Circle and rode an Icelandic horse on a cold misty morning, my body loose and easy in rhythm with his stride.
On the actual night I ate dinner on my own, I had a big steak with not one but two sauces – bearnaise and chimichurri – plus good bread and asparagus. Dinner alone can be quite a naked thing, especially on my birthday, especially without my kids. But when the crew sang me Happy Birthday, I felt lighter than I expected. Seen. Joyous. Myself. I thought I would miss my sons, miss our celebrations together as I was missing our life together, but I did not. I had been missing this version of me. I forgot she existed until this cruise.
That night, when I climbed into my best pajamas, I felt different. I ordered a big slice of chocolate cake. And a glass of Prosecco. I ate it in bed and watched Bridget Jones’s Diary on my big TV. This birthday, this cruise, this time of my life. It really is just for me.