It's my birthday and I'll reminisce if I want to

My birthday starts in a couple of hours. My dad is already giving me a hard time about how I tend to get a bit crabby on my birthday. Well, wouldn't you - a birthday is supposed to be a person's "special" day, and when that day falls on a day that most people feel some pressure to make special, how can it not be a let down?

Maybe I need to let go of the childish idea that a birthday is "my" day. And really, I have had a number of great birthdays to outweigh the ones that were disappointing or downright bad. Tomorrow I am going to one of the places I liked the best when I was twelve, the Getty. Before the Getty Center, there was just the museum now called the Getty Villa, a Roman-inspired building and grounds filled with ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan artifacts. The Villa was recently reopened after an extensive renovation.

While I really like the new Getty Center (especially the architecture of the buildings and the grounds, plus the photography collection, which - unlike a lot of their other non-classical art - is really great), I am excited to see the Getty Villa again. One summer my friend Katie and I took a creative writing class together. The class was in the mornings and we had our afternoons open, which was both a joy and a curse. Some days we went to my house and watched the 7 videos then available on a public access music video program. (I saw Institutionalized almost every day that summer. That song got so deep into the crevices of my brain that I can still sing the whole thing in head-thrashing glory.) Other days we went on excursions: to the mall; to Westwood; and once every week or two to the Getty. We went so many times that my mother got suspicious. Even though she and my dad love museums and took my sister and me to ones all over the country, she thought there must be something else going on to get us to this museum on such a regular basis. At one point she made me write a report on an artwork, to prove that we'd actually been to the museum. How sad is it that I was such a geek that I was in fact going to the museum, instead of lying to my parents and getting stoned behind the junior high?

The truth is that I loved going there. To get there we took a bus out the Pacific Coast Highway and got off at the base of the property. We hiked up the driveway, feeling particularly mature and cultured. We wandered around the gardens and through the galleries. I wasn't one to linger on too many things, but I did have a favorite painting on the second floor that I tried to visit regularly. It was a painting of a girl - royalty I think - and her little dog. She just looked so satisfied, as an insecure pre-teen that was compelling and astounding. Plus, I loved the detail of the painting, the brushstrokes making up her fur collar, the way her skin stretched across her cheeks. Somewhere I still have a
postcard of that painting.

And yes, Katie and I loved the cafe. We loved how adult we felt ordering snacks and taking them out to the patio to gossip and laugh, munch and sip. The Getty was so different from the architecture ofLos Angeles , where everything feels new and impermanent. This felt old and real. I think Katie felt this too. She more than me was a person enamored with the past. She moved back east for college and was thrilled to get decked out in L.L. Bean and attend a capella concerts on campus.

Just writing about the Getty and what it felt like to be there has done what my father's little lecture could not. I am excited for tomorrow. Ada will love running
around the museum, and though she probably won't stop to really admire many of the ancient works, I think she'll appreciate them in her own way. And then we'll come home for champagne, gumbo and my grandmother's recipe marble cake. Happy birthday to me! (And happy new year to you!)